


Our Two Souls Which Are One

by Whatevergirl



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Mirror Universe, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-08-07 16:56:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 49,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16412342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whatevergirl/pseuds/Whatevergirl
Summary: After a gruelling shift on the children's ward, Doctor Hugh Culber heads to a small café to relax before heading home, only to encounter his soulmate. But is Cadet Stamets interested in finding a weakness in the form of a soulmate, or is he more interested in his work on a spore-based power source?A story of life in the Mirror Verse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a version of the mirror verse where everyone with a soulmate has their name written on the inside of their wrist and, once they have a bond, can share emotions and in rare cases thoughts with their partner.  
> Also, I like to think that while we only see the very worst/ most ambitious of the people in the mirror verse, there are those who are not so manipulative in existence. 
> 
> 'Our two souls therefore, which are one,  
> Though I must go, endure not yet  
> A breach, but an expansion.  
> Like gold to airy thinness beat'  
> John Donne

Surrounded by broken toys, torn books and blood stained walls, Hugh Culber sighed wearily. He hated working in the children’s ward, where there was an abundance of reasons why the children were in and only half of them were sick; some parents had a terrible time handing their children over to the Terran Empire, injuring both themselves and their children in a foolish attempt to keep their child, others encouraged fighting to reach alarming levels as a way to teach their child to be strong, to hide fear... but the worst injuries had to do with soul marks. 

Nearly everyone had a name written on the inside of their left wrist, creeping down their forearm to stop at the wrist and every Terran that Hugh had ever encountered wore long sleeves and a cuff to hide their automatic weakness. Hugh himself had Paul Stamets written in tiny, cramped writing which barely even made its way off his wrist. 

There was no guarantee that Hugh would ever meet this person; sure they would be drawn to one another, drawn to the same places until their meeting happened, but it wasn’t a certainty and at twenty-six years old, he still hadn’t encountered him yet. Even so, Hugh was fortunate that he had most likely gotten another human. There were a number of children within the hospital with foreign markings on their skin, linking them to an alien somewhere out in the galaxy. But in the dominant, xenophobic culture that was the Terran Empire, having anything other than a human as your soul mate made you an object of ridicule, unless you could prove your worth as Jonathon Archer had done so many years ago when he had taken T'Pol as his slave and set her to work on his ship. 

To his own shame, Hugh occasionally had romantic notions of the life he could have with Paul Stamets drift across his mind... but he focussed on dispelling them. He was on track to be a Starfleet doctor, and compassion of any kind would have him struck off as a liability. 

“Still here, Culber?” Dr Potts had glanced in the children's lounge area as he passed and spotted the cadet, covered in blood and on the floor. “Go home, get cleaned up and don’t worry about it. You’ll find plenty of parents take a kid's arm off for having the wrong species of soul mate; in fact, wasn’t that the second one you’ve come across recently? How long have you been here now? It’s more of a thing on Earth than it is out here though. You’ll get used to it.”

And with that the man left again, not watching as Hugh slowly pulled himself up. It took several long moments before the young man was able to make himself move, walking almost automatically to the locker room to shower and change. However, as he headed back to his dorms, he made a detour into a café. It was a small, quiet café which always managed to have a friendly feel to it, despite the fact that most its patrons were cadets in the Imperial Starfleet; the owners were soul-bonded and utterly in love, with an almost inhuman ability to defuse situations. 

It was a café well-used by stressed cadets in need of thinking space as well as those medics who still had their emotions fully intact. 

“Good evening, Hugh.” Smiled Serenity warmly, already turning to prepare his coffee. “Or should I say morning? It’s late.”

Hugh felt himself relax slightly; while the Imperial Starfleet gathered the smartest and the strongest, those people were often either hopelessly cruel or utterly detached. Most of those in the medical profession had an operation to cut off their ability to feel, to empathise and care; indeed, Hugh had his own operation arranged for in the next twenty-six months; for when he would be finished his exams, have his results and hopefully be preparing to either board a ship or settle on a base somewhere. He’d wanted to have one before the final exams, which included a test to prove you wouldn’t give in to weakness, sympathy or blackmail… the operation was the easiest way to pass it. Unfortunately, there was quite a waiting list for those who lacked the money to bribe their way up the list. However, it was nice to remember that there were people in the galaxy who weren’t there to battle their way to the very top.

Taking a moment to breath in the strong aroma, Hugh allowed his heavy eyes to shut as he swayed slightly with exhaustion. “There was a complication on the children’s ward.” He replied, unable to give more details, despite wanting to unload. 

Serenity hummed flatly, scowling as she handed him his drink and held out the scanner to swipe his chip. She didn’t approve of anyone messing with soul marks, and she knew enough to realise that ‘complications’ generally meant that an arm had been hacked off to avoid the truth. “I’ll put some music on real quiet for you.”

“Thanks.” He almost managed a smile before going to sit down. As the orchestra began to play the overture, the young doctor glanced around as he began to softly hum along. The place really was nearly empty in comparison with the day time; he could see Dr Pudley and Nurse Andrews at one table, the blank look on their faces typical for their profession and even more so after the horrific attack in the common room when the odd markings that denoted an alien name had appeared on the wrist of an already sick young boy. Glancing away and willing his mind off the scenes, Hugh noticed another cadet nearby, the sleeves of his uniform rolled up and showing off pale arms, an unusual choice even with a dark cuff over his left wrist, and his hands were grasping his hair in what was obviously frustration. The table behind him was an older woman in the gold armour of command, she was smirking as she silently tapped away at her PADD. 

And that was it. Despite the time, this café was always open and it was very rarely empty. Early morning was the best time to be here though, it was quiet enough to hear what every music was playing without it having to be distractingly loud. 

“Hey.” A hiss came across the café, and Hugh looked up to see the other cadet glowering at him. “Be quiet or get lost!”

Hugh smirked back in response, unwilling to show a stranger how bad his day had been. After a moment’s hesitation, he stood up to take himself and his drink to the blonde cadet’s side.

“Are you saying you don’t appreciate Kasseelian opera?” He asked, putting the smirk back on again but honestly laughing when the cadet jumped so hard that he spilt his drink.

The young man scowled again, holding both his PADDs out the way as he mopped up the mess with a napkin. “Is that what it was supposed to be?” 

This time, Hugh’s laugh escaped. “You’re kind of rude, you know that?” He pointed out as he sat down, grinning as he watched the other man twitch. 

“I’m not the one sitting down at a table where I’m not welcome.” He hissed, the growl in his voice almost aggressive, except that Hugh realised he could see right through the act to an exhausted person underneath. “I’m not the one pois-” he cut himself off, his PADD chirping. “Do you mind?” 

Ignoring the hand that was waving him away, he responded “Go right ahead.” And leaned back to sip his drink.

“Straal?” The cadet turned away from him slightly, holding the PADD up and answering as a dark-haired man appeared. He had a smug look on his face, ruined only by the visible excitement bubbling over.

“You were right! You were just looking from the wrong angle.” 

“Explain. What d’you mean?”

“The spores do more than provide a network, they provide power.” 

The blond cocked his head, his expression hidden by the position of his body. “I know… you’re telling me you've found a way to harness it?”

“You’d better get over here, Stamets. I’ve made a breakthrough and there’s got a lot to get on with.” 

“What?” The exclamation fell out before Hugh could help it, surprised at the name. 

“Where are you?” asked Straal, having apparently heard Hugh. 

“I’m on my way.” The cadet replied, the scowl back on his face as he tried to edge past Hugh.

“Bring your friend.” Straal called as the call was ended. 

“You’re in the way.” Stamets complained as he shoved his work into a satchel. 

Hugh didn’t move though, instead turning to look properly at the other man. “Paul Stamets?”

Stamets froze, his lip curling as a look of horror took over. “No.”

“I’m Hugh Culber.” He held out a hand, watching Stamets stagger backwards.

“No.” 

“Yes.” Hugh refused to be denied in this and grabbed the man’s hand. “You’re mine.”

It stole his breath away, the sudden rush of emotions that weren’t his own; the anger, the hope, the overwhelming fear… The glare had been wiped from Paul Stamets face, only to be replaced by a look of utter terror. 

“You’re a medical cadet!” The man objected, his face so pale that Hugh wondered if he was going to faint. “You’re all heartless! I don’t want you as a soulmate.” And he sounded so genuinely devastated that Hugh let go, hurt lancing through him as he watched Stamets push him aside and hurry out the door.

“You need to go after him.” Serenity pointed out as Hugh stared after him. 

But Hugh shook his head. “Not everyone is fated to be happy, you know. He’s probably right though. A medic can’t be the soulmate that anyone wants.”

“Give me your com number.” She said, pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes. “He’s in here at all hours, so I’ll hand it over next time I see him.”

He stood for a long minute, weighing up the pros and cons; he would spend a long time pinned to his com unit while likely never receiving a call, but there was a chance this could all work out. He wondered if it was worth taking the risk… but he had already done that when he had formed a surface bond, one that he knew had taken as he’d felt that consuming fright the other man had felt.

“Here.” He sighed, taking her PADD and tapping his number out. “Let me know when you’ve given it to him though.” So he could then start counting down how long he would wait before giving up hope. 

Having lost all interest in his coffee, Hugh turned and left. He hurried home through the quiet streets to his dorm room, his feet trying to keep up with his mind as it raced through everything from what the future could hold to what he should have done differently in a meeting that was more important than any first contact. He desperately hoped that Paul Stamets was more than he appeared and dared to take a chance on him.

\------

“Stop staring at that number.” Straal growled as he analysed the specimen they were working on. “Either call him or come and help me.”

“What’s the right thing to do?” Paul asked his only friend, utterly unable to make a decision for himself.

“You said he’d hot, right? Go see if sex is all that great.” Neither he nor Straal had ever bothered having sex before; leaving yourself that vulnerable to someone seemed like a foolish thing to do when there was someone in the galaxy you were destined to be with anyway.

“What if it isn’t?” 

“Then stab him while he sleeps and come back here so you can help with this.” Straal replied, still sounding bored by their conversation.

Paul frowned, he knew he had been distracted but how else was he supposed to be when his soulmate had turned up only a week earlier. “What if the sex is amazing but he’s a total dick.”

“Then leave him alive so you can do it again some time before coming back here and helping.” 

“What if he’s an amazing person outside of bed as well?”

“He won’t be. He’s studying to be a Starfleet doctor.”

Paul sighed and wandered out the room, still entirely undecided. It was hard to know what to do when your only friend wasn’t concerned about your safety. 

“Contacting him would seem to be the first step.” He murmured, moving over to the com panel without really meaning to. The indecision seemed to last an age before Paul finally managed to raise his PADD and swipe the number onto the panel. He clicked connect.

“Hello?” The man answered far quicker than he’d expected, barely giving him a chance to take another deep breath. 

“Hugh Culber?” Paul asked, his knees going weak as he resisted the urge to puke.

“Yes. Who is this?” The other voice was harsh and it did nothing for Paul’s nerves.

“Cadet Stamets. Paul, I mean. Paul Stamets.” He rubbed a thumb over his soulmark as he forced the words out. 

“Stamets?” Culber’s voice changed completely, its tone becoming soft, almost wondrous.

He shook his head to dislodge any fanciful notions. “Yeah. En and Serenity gave me your number.” They'd both been so sure he should call, but he still wasn’t convinced it was the right thing to do.

Culber was silent for several breaths, almost long enough for Paul’s legs to give out and he turned and leaned heavily against the wall. “Y-You still want to talk to me?” There was a hesitation in Culber’s voice that he hadn’t expected.

They weren’t close enough for the surface bond to work, but Paul imagined he could feel the worry flowing through Culber; it gave him enough strength to talk. “You only get one soulmate.” He snapped, in an effort to sound anything but weak. “So yeah, I guess I do.”

“Are we meeting up then? Are you free now?”

“Not now. I’m working.” He took a deep breath to clear his thoughts. If the Terran Empire had a motto, it would be that everything was a means to an end; that’s all this conversation and first intentional meeting needed to be, just a means to an end. The sooner it was over and done with, the sooner things would settle down into a routine again, with or without Culber, but his lab work was going to suffer until he got this out the way. “Tonight?”

“Yeah. At the café? Or we could go somewhere else? For food, or straight to mine?”

Paul mulled it over, with no idea what to do. “Umm…” he hesitated. It was no good asking Straal for advice, as the man just didn’t care and Paul had no one else he could talk to. “Food? And then to yours?”

“Great.” He could actually hear the relief in Culber’s voice as he spoke. “Do you have anywhere you want to eat?”

“I don’t really care.”

“Meet you outside the café at 1900?” 

“Maybe an hour later. I don’t tend to get out the lab before that.” His heart was thundering as he spoke, his breath shorter as though he’d been running. 

“Okay. I’ll see you there then. Um, bye Stamets.” And the com beeped to let him know Culber had disconnected. 

“Shit.” He swore, legs finally giving in as he slid to the floor. “Shit.” 

A time, a place and a plan for the evening… he stared at the opposite wall as he tried to wrap his head around the notion. Maybe he ought to look up a guide to sex, it wasn’t something he’d worried about before but he didn’t want to be bad at it. Or was it supposed to be instinctive? Straal was the only person he knew well enough to reveal any slight weakness but the other man had no knowledge in this area either, so he couldn’t ask him. 

“Have you arranged something then?” Straal had abandoned his work for the moment to talk to Paul.

“Is it a mistake?” He wondered, forcing himself up as he looked at his friend. “We’re having dinner then going back to his.” 

“So you are planning to-”

“Yes.” He cut Straal off, going pink as he did so. “He’s stupidly attractive and is fated to be with me so yes.” But his own doubts began to creep back in. “I’m going to read up on how to do it though.”

Straal snorted but refrained from mocking him for it. “Fine. But after lunch we’re getting back to lab work.”

"I know." 

Straal grabbed a PADD and tossed it in his direction. “You have two hours to study, then we’re going to try extracting power from the network again. Satisfy your perfectionist tendencies and eat if you can.”

“I feel sick already. Maybe dinner first was a bad idea.”

Straal huffed and left the room, having lost all interest in the conversation. “Two hours.” He called back as the door slid shut.

\------

Hugh fought the smile off his face as he watched Paul Stamets turn onto the street and head towards him. It had been three days earlier when Serenity told him she’d given Stamets his number, eight days since they had first met and while Hugh had been unable to stop thinking about the other man, he’d talked himself out of expecting any contact.

Therefore, he’d been planning how he was going to act ever since he’d finished talking to Stamets that morning. A little more controlled was a large part of it and for once he was going to have to consider the feelings of another person; and not just any person but hopefully the one he’d spend the rest of his life beside. It was a difficult thing to consider when he spent so much of his life trying to hide all emotions that made him weak.

His mom had always said that if you showed the cracks in your life to your soulmate, then they would fill in the gaps and you would be stronger together. However, the idea of making himself vulnerable like that turned his stomach. How, in a galaxy where people only used weakness for their own gain, did you open yourself up to someone?

“Hi.” He said, trying to project confidence as Stamets stopped beside him. “How was your day?”

“My day?” The other man looked perplexed at this question; Hugh noticed after a moment that they were close enough for him to feel the confusion bubbling inside. “It was… okay? Yours?”

He set off walking with Stamets by his side, grinning at the stilted question. “It was different, that’s for sure. About half way through my shift this morning I got a call from my soulmate, which hasn’t happened before. I’m going to take him out somewhere nice.”

“Huh…” Stamets was looking at him like he was crazy.

“It’s a joke.” He assured him. “It wasn’t too bad. I work on the children’s ward at the hospital at the moment, which isn’t fun a lot of the time but that changes at the start of next semester.”

“So, you’re a doctor then?” He asked, and Hugh felt that odd well of emotion that wasn’t his own; curiosity this time.

“A junior one. I passed my first set of exams a few years ago and got sent out here a couple of months ago for more practical experience while I prepare for my final exams, which are in another two years.” It had been hard to leave behind what was both familiar and trusted, but he’d known he wasn’t going to get anywhere while insisting he remain in the Sol system. 

“Do you like it?”

“Well… Yes and no. We’re turning down here. On the one hand, it can be really nice. I enjoy watching people get better and knowing that, you know, I did that.” He stopped, putting a hand on Stamets’ back to direct him through a doorway and into a small restaurant. “But there are days when I don’t want to step anywhere near a hospital again.” Feeling the need to apologise bubble up inside him again, Hugh finally said the words. “I’m sorry, by the way. For grabbing you the other day. I’d had a bad day.”

He felt like he was making excuses, but something clicked with Stamets; be it his terrible attempt at an apology or Paul’s own ability to sense his emotions through their bond. “I… Well, I’m not sure if it’s okay but I do forgive you. Even if I had heard your name, I was far too busy with my research to even think about meeting my soulmate. I probably wouldn’t have done anything.” He looked a little embarrassed by this, though Hugh wasn’t quite sure why.

“Fate would have brought us together eventually, if the stories are to be believed.” Sitting down, they accepted the menu off the server, bringing up the options to read through.

“Stories?” Paul looked a little curious.

“Didn’t your schools do literature? It was a requirement where I went.” He tapped in his own choice and pulled back to let Stamets enter his own options. 

“No.” He still looked inquisitive. “My parents brought educators in to teach me from home. Apparently they thought I was likely to get myself stabbed if I went to school.”

Hugh wondered how rich Stamets’ family was that he hadn’t been taken away from them, but decided it would be more tactful to leave that question for now. “They didn’t insist on reading?” He asked instead.

“We didn’t cover any fiction.” He explained softly as he minimised the menu and relaxed. “When I got old enough, I was allowed to pick extra subjects to learn but literature isn’t something I thought of.”

“Well, I’m going to send you recommendations.” He stated with a smile. “Dating so far back that you need the textbook versions to understand the language.”

“It sounds perfect.” Stamets replied, his blue eyes warmer than any Hugh had seen in a long time. “I think, anyway.” He added with a sudden grin. “Having never actually read fiction, I don’t know if we’ll enjoy the same books.”

“So, what did you study when you got to pick?”

“I got pretty deep into sciences. So biology, chemistry and physics. I’ve been studying the cross over between them.”

“Is that what you’re working on now? You looked pretty stuck last week.” He could remember the man’s friend had called, but Hugh had been so distracted by hearing the name ‘Stamets’ that he couldn’t recall their conversation.

“Sort of. I got degrees in each of them then a masters in poisons and the PhD I’m doing is focussed on astromycology.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking wonderfully awkward. “I couldn’t decide what to do but I was old enough to join the Imperial Starfleet to do my masters, and their look into chemistry, biology and poisons really is the best.”

“Old enough?”

“My parents pushed me to do my degrees as soon as my educators thought I could get a good grade.” He explained. “But I insisted on leaving home to further my education.”

“What makes Starfleet’s course better than the others?” He asked, taking his arms off the table as a server came over with their food.

“They have a wider array of information on aliens than we do, and more information on plants and poisons.” He picked up his utensils, eyes on his own plate. “Starfleet doesn’t really share their information with universities and academies, so if you want it then you have to join them.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Very much so. That’s how I got into astromycology.” They were talking in shorter turns, now eating their dinners.

“That’s good.”

“Straal was my roommate, even though we were doing different subjects.”

Hugh was barely tasting his meal, all of his attention on the man before him. “But you are now?”

“Yeah. We’re both doing a PhD in astromycology and I think we’ve just cracked a big piece of the whole thing open.” He put down his cutlery and sighed.

“He was excited when he called you at the café.” Hugh could vaguely remember.

“Yeah.” Stamets smiled at him. “Some of our samples come from this small moon, but they’re really interesting. They link to this network, a mycelial network, and it links to everything.”

“Everything?” he wiped his mouth with a napkin as he watched the scientist.

“It’s a bit like a spider web. No, wait. You’re a doctor, so it’s like the veins and muscles that make up a body, they are there throughout the universe.” Stamets was using his hands to try and explain himself. “We were thinking that it should be possible to send messages along it, like subspace but more reliable but then we found that there is energy inside the network.”

“Okay.” He replied, aware that he could easily get lost with this but for the moment he was keeping up.

“So if you think of physics like biology then this energy is a bit like blood that flows through this network. We’re found that we can use it in small quantities to power stuff.”

“Does it leave an open wound when you stop using it?” 

“No. We extract the spores and then link it in to what we need. We’ve been developing this technology for a year but based just on the last few days, we think we’re going to have to go to Starfleet and get actual engineers to work with us to further it.”

“You can’t do that yourself?” He asked, curiously.

“Ah, no. My dad always wanted me to be an engineer, but I never took it up beyond the basics. And definitely not enough for what we need now.”

“So are you leaving a void where you take the energy from? In this network?”

“No. It heals itself. We’ve been able to detect a slight deficiency but it doesn’t last very long. And the power you get for the small amounts we take is extraordinary.” He smiled widely. “It really is something else.”

“Huh.” He murmured, putting his head back down to eat again as he really wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“What about you?” Stamets asked, as he began to eat as well.

“What about me?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I’ve talking a lot about me.” He hunched his shoulders slightly as he looked up at Hugh. “Why did you join Starfleet?”

“So my mom could leave Earth.” He replied honestly. “It’s really hard for anyone who isn’t in Starfleet to leave Earth so she didn’t get the chance to go until a year or so after I’d signed up. I’ve been with them for years though, and done most of my education through them.”

“Did you always want to be a doctor?”

“No.” He couldn’t seem to help replying honestly, even though this was something he’d never admitted. “I didn’t get a choice. When we got divided into careers at sixteen, I got put on the medical track.” He put down his fork again, smiling ruefully. “Most of the time I don’t mind, but some of the stuff I’ve come across is horrific and I know I’m not getting the worst of it.”

“Really?” Stamets’ own sympathy washed over him, bolstering him for the moment. 

“Yeah. There’s a reason a lot of doctors have to have their emotions snipped.” He stared at his hands, unable to look at the person who would be affected by his own operation. “The suicide rate in the medical profession used to be really high, so this is the best way for people to cope.”

“Run away.” Stamets whispered, leaning over the table to him. “Don’t let them ruin you.”

“Where can you go to get away from Starfleet? I’m hardly going to go join the rebels.” The idea was laughable.

“I guess.” He looked sad, as though they’d known each other for far longer than one week. “Still, you did look good in the uniform.”

“You think?” Hugh grinned widely, pleased to hear him admit it. “Ready to head back then, Stamets?”

“Yeah… and it’s Paul.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Cadet Paul Stamets. Nice to meet you.”

“Doctor Hugh Culber, for the moment also a cadet. Pleased to meet you.” He shook Paul’s hand, swiped his chip against the monitor and they headed out.

“I’m so glad you’re not a dick.” Paul sighed as they stepped into the cool night air. “I was worried you would be.”

“Me? I’m not the one who told someone to shut up for humming along to a wonderful piece of music!” he laughed, linking his arms through Paul’s. “I live a few blocks from here. It’s a single dorm room, but it is still a dorm room so don’t mind the mess.” He wrinkled his face up. “I did try to tidy but I don’t actually have enough storage space for everything to go away.”

“I’ll try get over it.” Paul replied, but Hugh did feel the pang of worry that lanced through him. 

“I’ll just have to distract you.” He decided, looking the other man’s body up and down with a grin. 

\------

Hugh’s dorm room wasn’t as bad as Paul had expected, but the man was doing an excellent job of distracting him even from that. With the firm body pressing him into the wall and a tongue in his mouth, Paul moaned happily. 

"Fuck." He sighed as he shifted back to tug at Hugh’s clothing. “I can’t believe I actually like you.” He was stupidly lucky to have gotten someone as perfect as his soulmate.

Hugh just groaned in reply as he began to bite lightly along Paul’s collar bone, the scrape of teeth unexpectedly exciting. Paul lifted one leg, hooking it around Hugh’s waist so that he could feel the press of his arousal against him. “Next to my front door isn’t the place for this.” The doctor muttered, his voice low and ragged which sent a thrill through Paul’s blood, the notion that he could affect him so strongly… 

But he didn’t get chance to muse on it as Hugh pulled away and tugged him over to a bed, stripping Paul’s clothing off without finesse. 

“You too.” The scientist gasped, the blush making its way down onto his chest as Hugh paused, hungry eyes drinking in Paul’s soft skin. “Y-you strip too.” He tried to make his words firm, but the fire burning in his veins made his breath stutter.

Hugh pushed Paul onto the bed before removing his own clothing. Watching someone strip with the knowledge that their bare skin was going to be rubbing against his own was entirely different to watching Straal strip because he’d split chemicals down himself. He was trembling with desire, all thoughts having evaporated with the heat of it. 

He’d studied for this, prepared his body as best he could before going to meet with his soulmate and yet the nerves had gone; his usual need to be perfect had disappeared as he whimpered. Hugh crawled over his body, lips roving over him as he kissed and nipped Paul’s skin. 

“Babe.” Hugh murmured, nuzzling into Paul’s belly. “I can’t believe I finally met you.” 

“Me either.” Paul replied, inelegant in his words as need flooded his veins in response to Hugh’s enthusiasm.

For a long moment, Paul relished in the experience of Hugh’s little bites, the slight pain more enjoyable than the wet slide of lips as Paul got used to the feel of another’s pleasure lapping into his own, their bond opening up into something stronger than the light connection it had been.

Eventually, he pulled the doctor back up so that he could kiss him again because for all that he wasn’t so sure about the idea of having someone else’s saliva on his own skin, he already knew how thrilling Hugh’s kisses were.

As the other man pressed him to the bed, one large hand moving down to entwine with one of his own, Paul wondered what kind of encounter this was going to be. Apparently, more than sixty percent of sexual relationships included a dominant and a submissive partner; Paul wasn’t sure he counted as either, because while he wasn’t confident in what he was doing yet, at some point he would want a chance of his own to explore Hugh’s undeniably sexy body… plus he wasn’t sure he trusted the other man enough to let him tie him up in any way.

But the thought of being bound up, able to look but not touch while Hugh scrapped along his skin made his blood heat and he moaned at the idea, legs wrapping around Hugh’s waist and his hips trying to find some rhythm as their erections rubbed. He whimpered with growing need and used what strength he had to hold his soulmate against him.

He moaned gently as the doctor pulled away, his own strength more than enough to move Paul’s arms as he nipped at the blond’s neck again; the sharp sensations distracting Paul from what his hands were doing as they slipped lower to knead the muscles of his ass. The scientist’s carefully considered plans of what to do and how to do it were utterly ruined by Hugh’s determination to stop him from thinking. 

“Beautiful.” Hugh whispered softly as he pulled away, looming over Paul as his eyes drank in the sight of mussed hair and flushed skin.

If he’d been capable of speaking coherently, Paul would have returned the compliment. Hugh was something to behold; lips swollen, chest heaving and a look of reverence on his face as his muscled upper body held him in easily in place. He tried to calm his body down, taking deep breaths in an attempt to stave off his orgasm, which seemed to be a simple touch away.

“How we doing this?” Hugh asked, keeping their bodies apart as he waited for an answer.

Paul just stared for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order well enough to reply. “Huh?”

“I mean…” Hugh looked unexpectedly awkward as he glanced around the room quickly before meeting Paul’s gaze again. “Do you have a preference for…? I mean, I usually top but if you’d rather…”

“I…” The blond hesitated for a moment. Was it wise to admit to no experience, or should he just avoid mentioning it? “Whichever you prefer.”

He’d read enough in preparation for this date that he should be fine with whatever position Hugh wanted him to take.

Hugh frowned, shifting to the side as he looked down at Paul. The blond sat up quickly, not likely the vulnerability when it seemed the doctor was stopping. “What’s wrong?” he asked, reaching an unsure hand out to touch his soulmate’s shoulder.

Hugh still looked uneasy. “You have… I mean, have you done this before?” He lifted a hand to take hold of Paul’s roaming one. “Intercourse, that is.”

“I… not as such.” His skin was burning now, but with embarrassment rather than arousal. “I’ve read up on it, but… I prefer to focus on my work than sex so…”

Hugh’s face shifted through some very quick expressions, but Paul didn’t manage to interpret them; instead, he pulled his hand back and crossed his arms over his chest bringing one knee up to sit more comfortably as he looked at the bedding.

“Is it a problem?” He asked quietly, wondering if he’d made a faux pas; he certainly felt like he’d made a stupid and embarrassing mistake, even if he couldn’t identify what it was exactly. Should he have mentioned his virginity earlier? Should he not have mentioned it at all? Was it something he should have gotten rid of as soon as he was old enough?

“No!” Hugh lifted his gaze back to Paul’s face then pulled the other man into his arms. “No, no, no. Sorry. Not a problem, no.” He pressed a kiss to Paul’s neck then held him tightly for a moment. 

“You sure?” Paul had to check, even as he unfolded enough to return Hugh’s embrace.

“Positive. It’s unexpected, but I forget that not everyone is a medical student, trying to fit in a lifetime’s experiences before getting their emotions cut off.”

Paul wanted to ask ‘like you?’ but he didn’t want to know the answer. Instead he curled into Hugh’s arms, able to enjoy the feel now that the surges of both arousal and anxiety had ebbed away.

“We don’t have to, if you want to wait.” Hugh said, his voice faltering with some unclear emotion but Paul shook his head.

“If you don’t mind then I very much want to.” He replied, shifting enough to press a kiss to Hugh’s jawline. “I’ve studied the theory, now I want the experience.”

“How to have sex, is that our research topic?” Hugh asked and Paul startled to notice that the laughter in his voice felt inclusive rather than condescending. 

“How to have the most enjoyable sex.” Paul corrected, a smile on his face as Hugh started to grope him again. 

Hugh chuckled as he nipped at Paul’s collarbone. “Well, we have our question. You’ve done theoretical research and I’ve done practical so what’s our hypothesis.”

“I-I’m not quite sure yet.” Paul moaned, leaning back onto the mattress and pulling his soulmate down with him; his own hands were roaming over Hugh’s back. 

“Well, I think penetrative sex with a partner is good.” Hugh’s voice was muffled as he continued down Paul’s chest, varying between kisses and nips as he ran confident hands over his sides and up to pinch his nipples. “But obviously we’ll have to explore a variety of different methods to come to a solid conclusion.”

“Ah, fuck.” He hissed, somewhat surprised to find his chest such an erogenous zone when he wasn’t usually that bothered about it. “Need to make sure we keep as many variables the same as possible.”

“Is that you asking me on another date?” Hugh sounded delighted, his eyes warm as he looked up from Paul’s chest to meet his gaze. 

“For science.” He claimed, then laughed as Hugh pinched his sides. Nothing he’d read about sex had included laughter or almost bizarre conversations about conducting experiments. This wasn’t a matter of someone submitting to a dominant soulmate that he would have to learn to trust, this was someone trying to level the playing field and Paul had a feeling he was going to end up hopelessly smitten with this man.

The doctor pressed another kiss to his belly as Paul stopped squirming, he was starting to find that he didn’t mind the idea of saliva when it belonged to Hugh. “Under no circumstances are you taking notes while we do this though. Not even for science.” He commanded, a grin on his face as he looked up to the blond.

“Yes sir.” Paul laughed, a wide smile on his face as Hugh finally moved down to his ass. 

“Let me know if anything hurts too much, okay?” Hugh spoke up from between his legs, but the rub of his hands and the light scratch of growing stubble against his inner thigh stopped Paul from thinking too much and getting self-conscious.

He nodded as he tried to relax. “Sure.” But he jumped when Hugh suddenly slid a hand down his leg to above his knee and pushed it up towards his chest. He knew without having to look in a mirror that his skin was a mottled red as he tried to settle down, but the feel of Hugh’s breath puffing lightly across his cock as the man looked him over was almost too much already.

“I want to do everything to you.” The doctor admitted softly with a slight laugh as he leaned over to grab a tube. “I almost don’t know where to start.”

“Do something!” Paul moaned, wanting to feel Hugh’s skin against his own again. 

“Keep this leg up here.” He instructed before wriggling down, his hands and most of his body out of Paul’s sight as he stared at the ceiling. “And push out when I tell you.”

“I know.” He replied, nerves and anticipation warring for dominance in his belly. “I read as much as I could.” Probably in far too much detail, some of it had turned his stomach, but at least he had enough knowledge to tell Hugh if he was doing something that he wasn’t going to enjoy.

It was a strange thing to feel someone else’s fingers going into his body, Paul decided as he focussed on listening to Hugh’s soft, encouraging voice as he told his inexperienced soulmate what to do; to not know where the next touch was going to be and to not have the corresponding feel with his own fingertips. 

What he did have, which was far more wonderful than the clinical textbooks had led him to believe, was Hugh’s emotions looping towards him through their bond; the other man’s desire so strong that he didn’t feel worried that Hugh was getting bored, or fed up with telling him what to do; in some distant part of his mind, that was a relief.

“Any pain yet?” Hugh checked, as he pulled back from sucking on the pale skin of Paul’s thigh, his fingers still moving inside his soulmate.

“It was a bit uncomfortable, but it’s fine now, I promise.”

“I think you’re ready then.” Hugh said, his voice almost breathless as he moved up slightly. “If you don’t mind.”

“Come on! I mean, yes, or go, or whatever it is you want me to say. Just fuck me already.” He cried out, then whimpered with a myriad of emotions as he felt Hugh finally begin to enter him. 

“Slow, slow, slow.” He could hear Hugh repeating to himself, the soft words barely audible over the roar of his own heart. The discomfort was edging into pain, but he pushed himself into the bond, letting Hugh’s unwavering arousal wash over him and he pushed out, groaning as he felt Hugh’s cock slide deeper into his ass. “You okay?”

Hugh’s voice was little more than a rasp, but it gave Paul the strength to nod encouragingly. “Keep going.” He whispered, trying to focus entirely on Hugh rather than noticing the feel of an erection inside him, or how his skin was sticky with sweat, or how tightly Hugh was holding onto his one leg, still pushing it into his chest. 

He got through the first few thrusts by focussing on the bond and the sensations that Hugh was experiencing, until Hugh managed to nudge his prostate and Paul was jolted back into his own body. “Do that again!” He moaned, and after a few tries, Hugh managed to get the angle right.

His whole body growing tenser as Hugh sent waves of pleasure crashing through his body, Paul barely noticed the noise he was making. If this was what having sex was like, how did anyone get anything done? Why weren’t people going at it all the time? 

He pulled Hugh against his chest, his leg slipping enough to clamp around his soulmate’s waist as they rutted desperately together, Hugh swearing as Paul’s own vocabulary disappeared and he simply moaned his delight.

In no time, Paul had his eyes shut as he shouted his release in Hugh’s ear. Flopping back onto the bed, limbs splayed inelegantly, Paul watched his lover move; with sweat on his face, his jaw hanging and his eyes only just open, he was more beautiful than he had any right to be. 

“Hugh.” He moaned softly, wanting to lift an arm to touch his face but unable to find the energy.

“Paul.” Hugh huffed as he came, eyes open enough to drink in the sight of Paul’s exhausted form. “Fuck.” He swore and dropped down next to him. 

Paul smiled, wanting to say something about successful experiments and repetition with changes to certain variables but with the warm weight of his soulmate resting on his arm, Paul drifted off to sleep.

 

\------

It was early in the morning when Hugh turned over and kneed Paul in the side. The other man didn’t stir, but Hugh jolted awake, having half-forgotten that he’d taken someone to his bed. 

In the soft light of the rising sun, Paul looked gorgeous; long stretches of pale skin marked where Hugh had bitten him and his backside still in need of a clean. He ran his fingers down the crack before rubbing the cheeks, feeling arousal starting to stir again. But Paul slept on and Hugh left him to it, feeling oddly generous and selfless in a way he just wasn’t used to. 

He staggered over to the shower and cleaned up, honestly feeling more relaxed than he could ever remember. Was it just the result of a really good night? Connecting with someone in a way he never had before? Deepening their surface bond so it was hopefully stronger? Something else? He had absolutely no idea. 

He was close to both his parents and his sister, trusting them far beyond any other. As with all Terran children, he’d been taken away from them at the age of five where the only contact had been over the coms, and then returned at eleven having been assessed, educated and all his talents fully registered. People with money didn’t have to give their children up, they could bribe the authorities to come to their homes and teach their children, as Paul’s parents had apparently done. But Hugh’s family, while not poor didn’t have enough to keep their children so he’d been sent away; but at least he had been returned. There were some children who never saw their parents again; those with talents that the empire could use; those who were killed in their education; those who were bought by the parents of their soulmate… 

But Hugh had returned home and had a chance to rebuild his relationship with his parents and his sister, when she was returned. And yet he wasn’t sure he could ask them about forming a close bond so quickly with Paul; his sister had met her soulmate but their trust hadn’t been so instant, it had taken years of work before they had been able to work as a solid unit and his mom often talked about how often she had nearly killed their dad because she hadn’t wanted to be bonded. 

He had friends of a sort, but no one he would ever be willing to discuss this with. He didn’t have anyone else anymore, not since he’d been put onto the medical track. Before then, he’d been in school with hundreds of other teenagers, each one working to recognise who was going to go ahead, who would fall behind; trying to work out the weaknesses of different people; learning how to exploit those weaknesses… he’d had friends before the age of sixteen, people he sat with at lunch, people whose vulnerabilities he knew but didn’t care to exploit, people he could share thought and experiences with and not have to worry about things getting complicated.

But when people got separated into tracks, they were told that they were now adults who could no longer pander to the needs of others. They had to give their all for the emperor and sometimes it meant taking out any weak links before they could ruin the empire.

Once clean and dressed, he headed over to the kitchenette and set the coffee machine off. Paul was still asleep, his heavy breathing soothingly rhythmic as Hugh rubbed his thumb over his soul mark, thinking; it was strange to realise that he had finally done it, that he had finally found the one person in the Empire that he could trust. And that not only that he could trust him, but that he already did so. 

The beep of his com distracted Hugh from his musing and he pressed it, answering quietly. “Yes?”

“Culber?” It was Nurse Prewitt, her voice terse as she spoke. “You’d better get over here. Cadet Richards has brought evidence that you’ve been cheating and Doctor Potts is more than a little angry with both of you.”

“Cheating?” Any pleasant feelings he’d had evaporated as he turned to glower at the panel. “I don’t need to cheat!”

“Richards has been saying that’s why you are doing so well. You need to get here.” Prewitt sighed as Hugh could hear voices in the background. “Consider this heads up payback. I don’t owe you a favour anymore for covering for me the other week.”

“I’m on my way.”

But he hesitated as he turned to look at Paul. Should he wake him or leave him sleeping? He stepped closer, crouching down beside the man as he thought. “Damn, you are lovely.” He murmured, drinking in the sight of Paul, his features relaxed in sleep, with soft blonde hair drooping over his forehead and pink lips parted ever so slightly. “Paul? Honey?”

However the scientist was flat out, not even twitching as Hugh raised his voice to speak. He sighed and grabbed his PADD, stepping over to the other side of the room to record a message. “Hey Paul. Sorry you had to wake alone but there’s a problem at the hospital that I need to go sort out. I’ll contact you later on but I will probably be away until the end of my shift now, which is at 2000 tonight. You’re welcome to hang around, but I don’t really have much to do in my room. Uhh, yeah. Hopefully I’ll see you soon then. Oh and my room is like most the other dorm rooms, so you can get out but it’ll automatically lock behind you, so don’t forget anything. Yeah, okay. Bye then.”

He ended the message, sending it to Paul’s PADD with a Read-Me note attached before pouring the coffee into his biggest travel mug and changing into his uniform. One last glance at the slumbering figure and Hugh headed out to grab a shuttle to the hospital.

Cheating, though? He wondered as he hurried down the street. Would anyone believe it? Of all the crimes to accuse him of though. 

Richards… Hugh thought for a moment as he turned into the shuttle port. He was a young man with fine, dark hair and protruding ears; he’d always been second in their classes behind Hugh and as such had often hounded him for help. Hugh had always turned him away, he was top of his classes without help and if Richards wasn’t able to keep up then Hugh was hardly going to halt his own progress to help him. 

He must have had enough of losing and decided to cheat himself. Unfortunately, it was a very serious crime as incompetence was not tolerated, especially in the medical profession. “Shit.” He swore to himself, already feeling anxiety pile on. What he wanted was a few quiet days to get to know his soulmate and work on their bond, not to be panicking about whether or not he was going to be spaced for cheating. 

If they made him retake his tests, he reasoned with himself, then it would be fine. It had been a while since he sat the last set but he’d aced his exams for a reason and could easily do it again, especially with the increase in practical experience he now had. Dropping into a seat on the shuttle, Hugh scowled out at the people milling around as he waited to leave. Maybe he hadn’t always wanted to be a doctor, as he had told Paul the previous evening, but he’d spent too long working towards that goal now to let it go. 

By the time he arrived at the hospital, Hugh’s anger was bubbling deep within him, hidden only by a brittle mask of indifference; he rather hoped Richards was hanging around the hospital so he could have an outlet for the almost overwhelming emotions. 

“Culber.” Doctor Pudley was at the reception desk when Hugh entered the children’s ward and the man simply pointed to Doctor’s Potts’ office. “Go.”

Taking a deep breath, he pressed the panel and waited for Potts to answer. 

“Culber. Come in.” Potts was at his desk when the door slid open, and Hugh stepped inside. “Sit down.”

Richards wasn’t here, he noticed with relief; it wouldn’t go down well if he got into a fight when he was supposed to be addressing this issue calmly. 

“I’m pleased that you arrived early. There is something I need to discuss with you and I don’t want to do so when you’re meant to be working.” Apparently he was unaware that Prewitt had contacted Hugh earlier on.

“Sir?”

“There has been a complaint made, stating that you’ve been cheating in your studies.” The man paused for a moment to look at Hugh, but the young doctor couldn’t see through Potts’ blank mask. “If he’d just filed it with me alone, I would have let it go; you have faults but a lack of knowledge isn’t one of them.”

“Thank you sir.” He replied, his whole body frozen in place as he waited to hear the next part.

Potts’ mouth twitched in what might have been a smile before he continued. “As it is, this cadet went behind my back to complain to the Head of Examiners and Starfleet HQ, so further action is required.”

“What do I need to do?” he asked, the anger that had enflamed his thoughts doused with determination as he realised that he stood a good chance of getting out of this mess; Potts wouldn’t piss about with talking like this if he was just going to take Hugh off the medical track. 

“You’ll need to undergo questioning first.” Hugh managed to hide his shudder, but only just; Questioning always started with time spent in the agoniser booths as it was effective in loosening tongues. “Then you’ll have to resit the exams to show you can still pass them.”

“Yes sir.” The exams he wasn’t worried about; the practical experience had given him a better understanding of what he had learnt so he’d probably get a higher score this time.

“The questioning will be soon.” Potts looked old as he pressed a buzzer and two orderlies stepped into the room. “Don’t let this keep you down for long. You’re my most promising cadet this year.”

Hugh nodded, but the fear pressing down on his chest kept him from speaking. Even so, he stood and left the room confidently, hiding his emotions despite the terror that threatened to make his legs fold underneath him.

It was only as Hugh was removing his jacket and stepping into the booth that something else occurred to him; he wasn’t alone in this upcoming pain. The bond he had formed with Paul was growing in strength and he was aware of the man still sleeping in his bed; it was unlikely that Paul would be able to remain asleep when this started as they hadn’t started building shields yet.

But Hugh wasn’t ready as the first bold of pain shot through his ribs; he gasped and clenched his fist as another jolted down his leg, then another across his shoulders, then down his arm. He whimpered and tried to think of Paul.

It was a few years since he’d last been in one of these, but then he hadn’t had any comfort at all; he’d gotten drunk and ended up fighting with Admiral Potter’s son and therefore had been left in a booth for nearly two days. At least this time, he knew he hadn’t cheated so he had that to hold on to. He was in the right and he now had a soulmate, whose concern he could feel along their bond. 

The next jolt danced across his skin, before the next one seemed to go deeper, then the next was light again; the variations giving him no chance to adapt as they changed and followed no pattern. Forcing a cry down, Hugh shut his eyes and tried to recall everything he knew of Paul instead.

\------

The first lash of pain pulled Paul from his sleep so quickly that he tumbled off the side off the bed. Clutching his ribs, it took him a moment to realise where he was but by then, he could feel more pain zapping across his skin; except it didn’t quite feel like pain. More like the memory of pain, similar to the time he’d fallen and badly hurt his ass. He’d been unable to slouch for weeks as putting any pressure on it had hurt and he’d refused to go to a doctor and show them his backside. It had taken time before he’d been able to lean back without remembering how much it had hurt, even after it had healed up.

This was a similar sort of pain, except that Paul had only experienced actual pain like this once when he’d been at the academy; when he’d first arrived, he hadn’t yet learnt that it was unacceptable to answer back and so had spent half a day in an agoniser booth to teach him a lesson. It had worked and he’d always remembered to watch his tongue around those in authority, though he didn’t spare a thought for his peers. 

Hugh… was it possible their bond had developed enough for him to feel what the other man was feeling? He whimpered slightly, the knowledge that the pain wasn’t his but someone else’s should have been a comfort, but some wild part of his brain insisted that he would have preferred to be the one in pain himself. He shook his head and staggered to his feet, worry for Hugh worse than the strange sensations that danced across his skin as he stumbled over to the bathroom. He startled as he glanced in the mirror on the way to the shower; his skin was covered in hickies and, when he turned, he could see a bruise on the back of his leg, just above his knee that was probably from Hugh’s hand holding his leg up as he’d taken him. Blushing, he clicked the water shower on and began to scrub away the remains of the previous night while trying to enjoy his shower. Was it possible to send Hugh comfort in the same way he was sending pain? Paul wasn’t sure, but he sure as fuck was going to try; breathing in the heat as he allowed the water to pound into his aching muscles, Paul tried harder than he ever had before to fully appreciate the shower, the thought that maybe this could help Hugh as he could still feel the random pains that flared up across his body stopped him from feeling too self-conscious.

Eventually, with his skin pink from the hot water and scrubbing, Paul raided Hugh’s closet for soft, baggy clothing and curled up with a cup of coffee and a thick blanket on the sofa. It was only when he clicked his PADD on that he realised Hugh had left him an audio message.

“Hey Paul. Sorry you had to wake alone but there’s a problem at the hospital that I need to go sort out. I’ll contact you later on but I will probably be away until the end of my shift now, which is at 2000 tonight. You’re welcome to hang around, but I don’t really have much to do in my room. Uhh, yeah. Hopefully I’ll see you soon then. Oh and my room is like most the other dorm rooms, so you can get out but it’ll automatically lock behind you, so don’t forget anything. Yeah, okay. Bye then.”

Paul snorted slightly as looked around. Not much to do in his room? That was an understatement, unless Paul developed an urge to study medicine because he couldn’t even spot these fictional stories Hugh claimed to have (he assumed they were on the man’s PADD, rather than existing as physical copies), and his fridge had salad and milk in it, but no beer or chocolate or anything that hinted at a little excitement. 

Still, he could work on his PADD here instead of at the lab. It was true he wouldn’t be able to work as quickly, but Straal could still send him the data he needed. Tugging the blanket closer, as though it could ward of Hugh’s pain, Paul went back to studying power grids; he and Straal believed that the mycelial network could be used as a power source and so had requested engineers to come in and help them, but Paul wasn’t going to let them loose with the spores in the lab until he himself had a decent understanding of what they were doing. 

The scientist did not want to rely on warp plasma to get the network linked as a power system, as warp engines were often pushed too hard and he didn’t want to have any overlap that could cause disaster, so Paul had started studying power systems yesterday so that he could work out a new one for the power they extracted from the network. If it worked as well as they anticipated, then they should be able to get a new ship built with a mycelial core to power it, with the warp plasma as the back-up. It was almost enough to make him tremble with excitement; he’d be stupidly well recognised, Hugh would be proud and no one would be able to say he was just a coward who had wasted his life. He’d be known across the galaxy!

“Stamets? Where the fuck are you?” Straal sounded more confused than annoyed when Paul commed him, likely because Paul had never been late to the lab in all their time of working together.

“Still at Hugh’s.” He replied, hiding the discomfort he could still feel from Hugh, nearly two hours after it had started.

“Why?” Straal looked curiously at him. “Were you so good at sex that he decided to keep you as a slave? If that’s the case you’re going to have to stab him and get back here because I won’t be able to keep our research going on my own.”

“I’m spending the day here because I want to.” Paul assured him, choosing not to tell him that Hugh was apparently being tortured at the hospital because there had been a problem. It was none of his business. “I’m sending you what I’ve sorted so far for our power system, and I’m going to have a look into warp systems in a bit, but I need you to set up an experiment for me.” He brought up the instructions he had put together and sent them to Straal. “Are those engineers there today? If you get one of them to make the system, it’s only a small one for now, but I want to know how it reacts when we put the mycelial power through it.”

“We’re ready for that already?” His research partner sounded surprised and Paul wondered for a moment if Straal had thought his interest in Hugh would actually have stopped him from working.

“The engineering of it really isn’t that complicated in comparison with the systems that are around. I just need to know if they are compatible with the spores. Once you’ve refined the power extraction then it should hopefully be easy enough to put together.” He paused and pulled a face. “Assuming they listen to me and make our system separate to the others… and that we are allowed to grow our own mushrooms so we don’t need to waste time making trips to get new ones.”

“You waste more time growing them.” Straal objected, though his attention was clearly on their work. This was an argument they’d had often enough that it was more habit than actual discussion. “Just bulk store them and if what we’ve found so far holds up, a cargo bay full of them should keep us going for ages.”

“I’d still prefer to grow them for myself, just in case something happens to the moon we get them from.” If this mycelial power got going and the rebels realised where they were getting the spores from, then they’d have to go all out to destroy the moon. It made sense to grow the fungi elsewhere just in case the Imperial Starfleet didn’t bother to protect the moon properly; they weren’t known for looking to the future and making contingency plans for if everything went wrong.

“You’re a pessimistic idiot sometimes.” Straal sighed before looking over his shoulder. “The engineers are here so I’m going to set them off with your experiment. I’ll send you updates. Let me know if your doctor is keeping you hostage and you need him taking care of.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’d better.” And Straal ended the connection. 

Paul put the PADD down and shut his eyes for a moment. He was going to have to wait a little while for a report anyway, and Hugh was no longer in fresh pain, though he did seem angry about something. It was another seven ours till Hugh was due back, but Paul decided to make some dinner up; he had fresh ingredients and if Paul could get him to relax as soon as he got back, he was less likely to take it out on Paul.

As he back to pull a small pack of fresh meat out the fridge, Paul’s mind drifted to his parents; they would be furious if he ever told the he just found his soulmate and went home with him. They’d spent his whole childhood, up until he escaped to Starfleet, trying to instil paranoia in him of everyone he encountered; and Hugh, who had sat next to him uninvited and grabbed him when he realised Paul’s name and was a doctor… the scientist should have gone running from that meeting without looking back, he should have ignored Serenity’s attempts to reconnect them and thrown himself into his work. 

And Paul honestly couldn’t explain why he hadn’t done just that, other than the fact that this was his soulmate he was mouth-wateringly attractive and Paul was genuinely curious to see where it could go. He sighed and turned his attention to cooking; he’d make something nice to give Hugh a boost when he got back, especially if, as Paul suspected, he’d been stuck in an agoniser booth due to this problem at the hospital, then he’d leave it to cook slowly as he ploughed through some more work. Hopefully the first report would be sent by then and he could distract himself from the unnerving feelings of concern and anxiety for the doctor that just wouldn’t go away. He just needed something else to think about.

\------

The first thing Hugh noticed as he slumped back through the door was the smell; there was the smell of bologna that reminded him of staggering back home from school as a teenager to find his mom in the kitchen, with his dad banished to the back room as he couldn’t heat pre-made soup without burning it.

“Paul?” He called out softly, surprised to find how eager he was to see the other man. “Are you still here?”

“Is… that okay?” the blond stepped out of the kitchen, and Hugh almost groaned at the sight; he was insanely attractive in Hugh’s soft clothing, the stuff he wore when he was having a bad day. It wasn’t a bad fit either, even if the top was a little looser as Paul clearly didn’t work out.

“It’s perfect.” He muttered, pulling the man against him to press a gentle kiss to his lips. 

However, Paul pulled back slightly, resting his hands on Hugh’s shoulders as he frowned at him. “What happened to you today? What was this problem?”

“Someone claimed I was cheating.” He explained, quietly enjoying Paul’s concern. “I had to prove I wasn’t.”

“Did it all get sorted?” He asked, with genuine interest.

Hugh pulled him into a tight embrace. “Yeah. They questioned me and then I had to sit my exams again, but it was easy enough.”

“If you say so.” 

Hugh hung on for a little longer, his heart swelling at the idea that someone actually cared. In all his thoughts on soulmates, he’d never considered what it would be like to come home to someone who honestly wanted him to be okay; to step in the door to find dinner cooking and have someone ask if he was alright. The idea was almost unterran and yet it was utterly perfect.

“How was your day?” He asked, stepping over to his closest to get changed into something clean. “I hope you weren’t bored.”

“I have my PADD.” Paul replied, raising his voice as he stepped back into the little kitchen area. “I just worked from here instead.”

“How’s that going?”

“Really well, actually.” Paul grinned at him, and Hugh found himself grinning back, bizarrely happy at the thought of someone else’s success. “We’re going to keep at it for a fortnight, but if the project keeps going as it has been then we’ll be able to present the findings to Starfleet much sooner than expected.”

“You didn’t expect it to go well?” Hugh asked, sitting at the table as Paul began to dish the food out.

“I don’t know. I was expecting to have a lot of kinks to iron out, but there haven’t been any yet.” His lips twisted into a wry smile and he put the bowls down. “It’s probably too soon to be thinking of how well this could go, but…” He trailed off, shrugging slightly as his grin came back.

“Paul, that’s excellent!” Hugh exclaimed, his eyes wide as he wondered just how smart his soulmate was.

Paul just nodded before putting his head down to focus on eating, but Hugh noticed the pinkness in his cheeks with an odd feeling of contentment in his chest. He couldn't wait to see where they ended up.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re being a paranoid idiot.” Straal complained without looking up from his sample. “This is going to work.”

Paul shook his head, glowering at his friend. “It’s not stable.” He stood up and crossed his arms over his chest, nervous energy flooding him. “It’s not safe.”

“They’re not going to work as a power source unless we combine the crop together. The smaller ones just aren’t effective.” The dark-haired man rolled his eyes, leaning back in his seat to grab is PADD from a nearby table.

“As the one who put all the work in to discover that, I know!” Paul wasn’t overly confident about having the network prised open in such a way. 

As he stormed off to glower at his own research, he tried desperately to think of another way. In the four years since they had discovered how to harness the power from the mycelial network, their project had made great progress; they were able to use it as a reliable power source and even had a good understanding of the engineering behind what they were doing now. However, the plan to access enough energy to power the ships that were being designed was leaving Paul seriously worried. Unfortunately, Straal didn’t share his concerns; after all, the network had shown that it could heal itself and if it expanded the galaxy and possibly the universe then it should be massive and so their actions shouldn’t affect it…

But Paul couldn’t help thinking of his work in terms of biology now, as though the galaxy was one enormous body and the network really was the equivalent of the internal systems that kept everything going. Occasionally, his mind drifted to the question Hugh had asked years earlier; something about leaving an open wound and a resulting deficiency. At the time, they had just been extracting the power then closing the connection back up. With the small amounts they had been taking, the mycelial network had been able to recover.

However, things were different now. Paul had realised that taking more power was having a negative impact, which meant they needed to use both more spores to gain the power they wanted; it was a cycle he didn’t want to get caught up in. Having the extraction start from one point, the large power core that they were developing, meant that the output was far more impressive than when he had tried extracting it from numerous smaller cores. The downside was that they couldn’t seem to stabilise the core when they such a large number of spores in one place. Paul was fairly certain the problem was that not all the spores coped well with being dry-stored; however he couldn’t convince the Imperial Starfleet to let him grow his own. After all, why would they waste resources on that when they controlled the system where the mushrooms grew naturally? It was like hitting his head off a brick wall trying to explain himself to those in charge, except he was pretty sure he could make more of an impact on a brick wall than he was with Starfleet.

He had tried holding back, to control how much Starfleet knew so that he could find alternatives before the ship that was supposed to contain a mycelial core was built… unfortunately, Straal had seen an opportunity to get ahead and so, last week, had sent off a portion of Paul’s findings under his own name. Paul still hadn’t forgiven him and Straal had blackmailed several of the minions to watch his back to make sure Paul didn’t stick a knife in it; Paul had never actually killed anyone, but some days, as he looked across the lab to see Straal smirking to himself, the thought was tempting.

"Stamets? I need you to look at this." Straal was holding out a data card as Paul ignored him. “Come on. Starfleet is coming tomorrow and I’ll tell them you helped if you sort this out for me.” 

“Piss off.” Paul replied tartly as he headed into their mini-garden. The only fungi they had clearance to grow were the poisonous ones and they were cross breeding Earth samples with alien ones so that they could increase the likelihood of them surviving on other planets… ‘They’ naturally meant ‘Paul’ because Straal still refused to help in growing anything, but Paul was finding this project almost as enjoyable as working with prototaxites stellaviatori, which he was still only allowed to harvest and dry store.

Once suited up, he stepped into the actual garden and glanced over to his favourite hybrid; a cross between amanita virosa and a curious sample they’d found in the binary system of Iccobar; which, when the spores got caught up in a hot enough breeze, caused hallucinations and often fatal seizures. He had other fungi to work on first though, so he turned away.

Straal left him to work for the next few hours, rightly assuming some alone time would help them both. As Paul headed over to the aquatic section of his garden, he brought up scans of his newest hybrid; it was a mixture of psathyrella aquatica (a Terran, underwater mushroom) and a poisonous plant from Vulcan; he hadn’t actually expected the strains to mate but once they had, he had found that they grew best when kept in warm, salty water. Looking at his readings, he noted again that the ones kept in changing light, made to mimic the light from a sun with the UV light matched closely to that of Vulcan, were almost thriving in comparison with the others. His contented burst of delight resulted in an amused pulse coming back along his bond with Hugh; curious, as the ISS Buran (the ship that Hugh was currently serving on) wasn’t even in the Sol system at the moment, but perhaps it meant their connection was growing. Still, he forgot about it soon enough as he updated his logs and moved back over to his favourite hybrid. Once the aquatic mushroom was sorted, it didn’t matter too much what order he worked his way through the others in. 

“Are those barbs?” he murmured in surprise, as he looked at the stipe below the annulus. There were buds underneath the ring with what looked like sharp spikes emerging. “That’s new.” It was also only happening on this one sample of hybrid. 

Straal came with a peace offering of coffee around dinner time, knocking loudly on the outer door to let his colleague know he was there, and Paul sighed as he headed back out.

“I’m sorry I sent the updates of our research to Starfleet. I read through them and they looked ready.” He said as Paul accepted the mug.

“My research.” Paul pointed out, wincing as he realised how petulant he sounded. “I’ve got some worries about the long term viability of this project if we keep going at the rate we are.”

“Well, I don’t think we would have had a choice anyway.” Straal looked uncomfortable for a moment, before his usual blank mask settled back in place. “Do you remember Lieutenant Terral? That Vulcan?”

“The one who was here a few weeks ago?” It had been fairly memorable simply because Terral had a high rank for someone who wasn’t human. “The snarky guy who kept asking questions?”

“That’s the one.” Straal definitely looked annoyed under his mask; they’d been friends long enough for Paul to recognise that, and for Straal to not force every emotion out of sight. “He saw there was stuff you hadn’t sent off so he took copies of it to Starfleet himself.”

“I have it rigged so it can’t be copied without alerting me.” Paul shook his head, a sour feeling of dread settling in his stomach. “I would have known.”

“He’s a Vulcan, Stamets. I think they have like, I don’t know… they remember nearly everything.” Straal stood up and headed over to their one small window. “At least, he remembered enough and told Starfleet that we aren’t giving them everything.”

“Shit.” Paul swore softly, sinking down to the floor in tired misery. “It’s not ready to go to Starfleet yet. The whole network is going to get corrupted if we keep tearing it open like this and I’m trying to think of another method.” He paused for a moment, his mind whirring as he desperately tried to think of solutions. “Maybe we could take it in a continuous small stream, like an IV but in reverse and then we could store the power up.”

“I know your soulmate is a doctor, but you have got to stop thinking about this in medical terms.” Straal had apparently hit the limit of his patience, his typical bad temper flaring up. “The work we are doing does not tear a hole in the network and it’s not going to bleed out. Nor is it going to get some kind of weird space infection so just…” Straal trailed off as he noticed Paul smirking.

But Paul really couldn’t help the sudden, inappropriate urge to chuckle. “What if it gets a fungal infection?”

Straal rolled his eyes. “When you leave tonight, I’m changing the access codes.”

“If I leave tonight.” Paul groaned as he drained the rest of his coffee and stood up. “I’m going to finish this, get it logged and then I’ll look into those proposals.”

“You sort out your hybrids.” Straal curled his lip slightly; he never had taken a liking to growing their own stuff. “I’m going to look into what needs sorting for Starfleet.”

As he headed back into the main lab, Paul stuck his head through the door after him. “You try sending anything else I haven’t approved, I’ll make sure you regret it!” he hollered after him, grinning as Straal flipped him off. “This is mostly my fucking work, not yours!”

He turned and headed back into the garden. 

 

\------

Paul raised a brow at the sealed door, wondering what Straal was up to. Their argument the day before hadn’t been any worse than the other ones they’d had over the years, so why had he locked Paul out? He hadn’t thought the man was serious when he said he’d change the access codes.

He tapped the com. “Straal? Let me in.” Then glared at the panel, waiting for his friend to respond. 

“Doctor Stamets?” 

Paul turned to see an officer approaching him, the silent shadow of his guard a step behind. “What is it?” He asked, pressing his back to the wall as the men reached him. 

“You need to come with us.” The officer said, holding up a communicator. “Three to beam up.” 

Paul grit his teeth but refused to let them see how unnerved he was. Stepping off the transporter pad, the scientist was led through the corridors of a ship and into what looked like a board room. After refusing a drink, Paul was left in the room with a guard standing by the exit. 

He considered his position for a moment, then stepped over to tap into the console on the wall; the guard shifted, one hand sliding down stroke the trigger, but he didn’t verbally object so Paul continued. 

It only took a moment to access the ship’s name and he had to hide his surprise. The ISS Buran was the ship Hugh was serving on at the moment, and he’d been under the impression that it wasn’t going to be near Earth for some time.

“Doctor Stamets.” A low voice addressed him, and Paul turned to see a man stepping through the door.

“And you are?”

“Captain Gabriel Lorca of the ISS Buran.” He introduced himself, his lazy drawl almost friendly if not for the look in his eyes.

“And what am I doing here?” Paul straightened up, feeling distinctly uncomfortable in on his basic Starfleet science armour in comparison to the thick coverings the man before him wore. 

“Oh, I think you know that.” Lorca smirked, sending a chill through Paul. “A man who’s willing to kill everyone in his lab when he doesn’t get full credit? Well, I was curious; had to see you for myself.”

“K-Kill?” Paul couldn’t quite help the stutter in his voice, but he did at least manage to keep his face blank.

“Are you telling me you’re unaware that you somehow managed to leave your room full of toxic plants unsealed?” Lorca raised his brow and Paul’s blood ran cold.

He took a deep breath before meeting Lorca’s gaze. “Straal’s dead?”

“Not just Doctor Straal. The spores from that plant you’ve been growing took out the sixty eight people in that building.” Lorca looked genuinely amused but didn’t seem to notice Paul’s growing horror. “We had an alert out at 0200 hours this morning, and when the team got there, they found everyone dead.”

“The hybrid I’ve been growing…” He coughed to clear the lump in his throat; his favourite home-grown mushroom. “I have estimated that left in a sealed building with decent airflow, it could kill the occupants within three hours.” He stared at the wall before him, his ears ringing as though the captain had been shouting the words at him. “And in an unsealed building, I’ve estimated that it could kill up to seventy percent of the occupants, if they breathe enough of the spores. It only takes a brief exposure.” Breathe in for two, hold for four, out for four; repeat…

“Mm-hmm.” Lorca was smirking at him. “I’ll admit that from what I’ve read of you, I wouldn’t have thought you capable of killing so many people, but I’ve been told scientists do get possessive of their discoveries. Dr Straal recently submitted your own work as his own, I believe.”

“He’s done it before.” Paul replied, feeling curiously detached as he turned his gaze back to Lorca. “I told him not to.”

“The team did come across the surveillance data from your lab; apparently death threats between the two of you were fairly common.” Lorca wasn’t even looking at him anymore, his attention on his PADD. 

Paul nodded, but couldn’t get any more words out; he locked his knees out, hoping their trembling wouldn’t result in him collapsing. Early on in life, he had learnt to bury unwanted emotions until he could express them in the safety of solitude, so consciously disassociating himself wasn’t a struggle. He knew how to take a mental step backwards and act as though his situation was happening to someone else. Showing even the slightest hint of sorrow could be catastrophic as he didn’t want Lorca to see any regret. 

“They weren’t always idle threats.” He said, needing the mental distance to lie successfully. Ignoring the fact that his friend was dead, Paul worked to think logically about how to manipulate the situation to his advantage. Murder was only against the law if you were both caught and seen to be weak about it. It also helped to make himself useful. “And he was a hindrance in our work far too often.”

“So you know plenty about this power network?” Lorca asked, finally giving Paul the full intensity of his stare.

“The power that can be accessed from the mycelial network. Yes.” Paul corrected, glaring over at the Captain; it wasn’t a struggle to access anger when ignorant, power-hungry idiots tried to question him on his work. “It is complicated, but I’ve put a lot of work into understanding it. The work you got from both Terral,” he couldn’t help spitting the name, still angry at the alien for spying, “and Straal is incomplete.”

“Is that right?” Lorca sounded amused again, but it sent a chill through Paul as he saw how cold the man’s eyes were. “You have an important meeting tomorrow. You’re staying here tonight.”

“On the Buran?”

“You get to spend the day in sickbay first.” Lorca was actually chuckling as Paul supressed a tremble. “We want to make sure you haven’t been poisoned by those mushrooms you were growing, after all.”

“I don’t need to see the doctors. The symptoms would have presented themselves by now.” He insisted, his fear of doctors greater than his want for a chance to see Hugh. 

“I’ll take my medial officer’s word on that and not yours, Doctor Stamets. I don’t want you making our special visitor sick. Now off you go.”

And when Lorca gave a nod, the guard grabbed Paul’s upper arm and half-dragged him from the room. 

\------

“Doctor Culber?” Doctor Bradshaw spoke up as Hugh came out the office. “We have a guest on board. You check him over and find him somewhere to stay for the night. I’m sending you the file.”

She waited for Hugh to acknowledge her order, then headed off to her own, private office. He picked up his PADD, then froze as he saw the data file.

_Doctor Paul Stamets. Sex: Male. Age: 29 years, 5 months, 21 days._

Paul? He wanted to demand to know what was going on, but kept quiet. He wasn’t going to treat Paul any differently than he would any other guest, at least not when he was in public. Still, he mused as he positioned himself so that he could see the entrance to sickbay, they must be near to Earth; that would explain why he’d been able to sense Paul along their bond yesterday.

There was a brief report on a poisoning in Paul’s lab, and Hugh’s eyes widened as he realised they thought Paul had done it. Was that the horror he’d felt along their bond not half an hour ago? Apparently he was supposed to check Paul over to make sure the man hadn’t accidently poisoned himself but apart from Paul’s medical record, there was no more information on what had happened. As he waited he took a moment to check over his partner’s file, feeling the gentle warmth in his chest that sometimes wound its way around his heart when he reached the soulmark section and saw his own name there. 

Starfleet’s files always included soulmarks, and although they likely knew a large number of people who were fated to be together, they never made any attempt to match them up; the marks were treated as an extra bit of information, as useful as dental records for identifying a person if their faces were damaged beyond recognition. 

The doors to sickbay slid open and Hugh had to work to keep his usual scowl on his face; he hadn’t expected to see Paul for another four months so this felt like a real bonus, but he also knew that showing a positive reaction to the man could be used as blackmail, or as a starting point to Lorca finding out about their relationship and making up some reason to deny him leave at the end of this rotation. 

“Doctor Stamets.” He greeted, glaring the guard away as he led Paul off to a small examination room. These weren’t monitored, so he was free to give him a slight smile once the door shut. “How are you?”

“Straal’s dead.” 

Hugh nodded. “So I heard.” He’d read about grief, but people who fell apart after someone’s death were always removed from active duty, so Hugh hadn’t really encountered it outside the hospitals he had worked in. He wasn’t actually sure what he was supposed to do to help. “Do you… want to talk about it?”

“I was angry and I wanted to leave, so I guess I didn’t seal up my garden properly. I can’t spend the day here though. I have samples that need attention.” His voice was steady, but he looked a little stunned.

“I’ll send a message about it so someone can check your lab, but you’re going to be here until at least tomorrow.” He stepped back and picked up his medical tricorder.

Paul pulled a face. “I know!” He flopped back onto the bed with a sigh, his eyes drifting over to the door as Hugh began to scan him.

“Yeah. So you’re staying with me tonight.” He was looking forward to having Paul in his bed again. The thought of having sex with other people just wasn’t appealing anymore, so he was eager to have some time in the sheets with him.

“I don’t really want to have sex tonight.” Paul could apparently feel his lust along their bond, but Hugh smiled as he send his scans over to his PADD

“It might help you forget about what’s happened.” He pointed out. “Or are you telling me you’ve ever thought about Straal once I’ve got you tied up and sat on me?”

“Only that one time we did it in the lab and I was worried he was going to walk in on us.” Paul gave him a reluctant smile and Hugh grinned in response. It had bothered Paul enough that he’d never tried to fuck him in the lab again though, as he wasn’t entirely selfish. “You really think it’ll help? I’ve already had enough of feeling bad, but I can’t seem to make it go away.”

Hugh shrugged as he helped Paul sit up, resting a hand on his shoulder and wishing he could feel the warmth of his skin rather than the thin, flexible armour that counted as the minimum that humans in Starfleet had to wear. “I think so? I mean, it always made me feel better when I was working in a hospital where people kept dying.” He didn’t feel quite as bad about the soldiers who died; they had chosen their fate.

Paul sighed, leaning his forehead against Hugh’s shoulder in an odd display of vulnerability and the doctor lifted a hand to sink his fingers into blond hair as the scientist spoke up. “Am I staying with you tonight?”

“Yeah. I’ll take you there and you can get some rest. I don’t finish my shift for another seven hours but we can eat after that.”

“I’m not hungry.” Paul replied as he relaxed against his shoulder, like a dog that was content to be petted.

“I don’t really care.” Hugh brought up his other arm to give the man a short embrace before he stepped back. “But if you like, I can get something from the mess for us to eat in my cabin rather than insisting you eat with the rest of the crew.”

Paul gave a nod and he didn’t object when Hugh got to him his feet and led him out. “Thanks.” He said, too softly to be heard by anyone else.

“Luckily, it doesn’t seem like you did pick up anything from those spores in your lab, so the damage must have been done after you left.” Hugh said as they left sickbay, switching their conversation back to an appropriate topic.

“I told Lorca that.” Paul rolled his eyes. 

Hugh smirked at him, but resisted the urge to tell Paul to be nice. His partner wasn’t a member of the crew and so didn’t have to watch what he said about the captain; plus Hugh enjoyed the attitude. 

“Are your rooms monitored?” Paul asked as Hugh let him in.

“No. They aren’t allowed to, and I do an extra check every few days. I don’t think anyone here cares about me enough to think I need watching.” Hugh replied, and smiled as Paul pulled him into a tight embrace.

“Lorca said something about a meeting tomorrow.” He muttered, his hot breath fanning out over Hugh’s cheek. “I wonder who I’m going to be explaining myself to.”

“Just be careful what you end up saying. I’ll be annoyed if you get yourself stuck in an agoniser booth for answering back.” Hugh kissed his cheek and stepped back. “I’ve got to get back. There’s a food resequencer over there if you want anything and I have some literature on my personal data card which I can get if you like?”

“It’s okay.” Paul shook his head. “I might nap as I’ve been working a lot of hours in the lab recently, and I have stuff on my own PADD to get on with.”

“My portable communicator is just for medical usage, but if you need me you can send a message to my PADD.” He hesitated a moment, then added “but don’t actually send anything unless you actually need to. I’m not sure how closely in-ship coms are monitored.”

“I’ll be fine, Hugh.” Paul assured him, and Hugh felt the usual flutter of warmth in his chest that he got around Paul when his partner spoke his name. “Go.”

“I’ll see you later. Do try and eat something. The liquids we get from the resequencer don’t taste too bad.” He said as he headed back out the door.

It slid shut, and Hugh took a moment to organise his thoughts, putting his fondness for Paul back into its box as he hurried back to the medbay.

However, it was hard to keep his mind focussed on his different tasks throughout the rest of the day when he knew his partner was waiting for him. By the time his shift finished, Hugh was already half-hard in his trousers and he forced himself to head to the mess to pick up the tastiest options they had rather than heading back to get Paul in between the sheets straight away.

As he stepped back into his cabin, tray in hand, his heart experienced an almost painful flutter as he saw Paul lazing on his bed, PADD in hand. It made him freeze for a long moment, thinking about the strange notion of a home until Paul stood up.

“What’s for dinner?” He asked, putting his PADD down as he looked Hugh over.

“Not me yet.” The doctor smirked. “Instead you get this…stew, I guess. It’s not exactly labelled but it’s not too bad.”

Paul took the tray with a wry grin. “It looks lovely.” He said, managing to keep a straight face as he looked at the slop. 

“It tastes kind of like beef.” Hugh informed him as he began to take off his armour. “I had some on my break earlier.”

“Didn’t fancy a second try?” The scientist asked as he sat at the desk and picked up a spoon.

Hugh sniggered as he peeled off his uniform jacket, the sleeves still sticky with blood. “Believe it or not, this actually counts as good.” He dropped onto the bed to remove his boots. “Only the captain and senior officers get food that actually looks good. Some of this is yesterday’s leftover… and probably some from the day before too.”

Paul’s face twisted in disgust. “Is it bad that I already can’t wait to go home?” but he picked up some bread and began to eat.

“I see how it is.” Hugh complained with mock misery as he stripped down to his shorts and undershirt. “The chance to see me ranks below a good meal.”

Paul’s laughter rang out as Hugh stepped into the washroom to clean up. “I’m not going to confirm or deny that one!”

“Hurry up and eat your dinner! I want some personal time with you before we sleep.” He actually wanted to ask how Paul was feeling now that he’d had a long day alone to think about Straal, but he wasn’t sure how to phrase it.

“You mean we’re going to have a bit of a read and then get some sleep?” The innocence in his soulmate’s voice only held up until Hugh looked over at him; the feeble attempt at a naïve expression crumbled when the doctor raised his brow and Paul began to laugh. “Well, I’ll have to take the dishes back first.” He tried to resume his innocent look as he continued, but failed.

“I’ll just put it outside the door. There’s always someone on light punishment who needs to go through the ship and tidy things away.” Hugh left Paul to finish his meal as he used the toilet and gave his arms another good wash; Andorian blood always seemed to take a lot of effort to get rid of.

He took the tray off Paul and deposited it outside the door before checking his PADD. He’d only had a handful of messages through the day, and only one needed a reply before sleep; a message from Doctor Hart asking to swap shifts tomorrow.

As he finished sending a refusal, he felt two hands grip his shoulders and a warm body press against his back. “This personal time…” Paul said with a grin in his voice as his lips skimmed Hugh’s ear. “I don’t suppose it involves being bundled up in the blankets?”

“There can be blankets involved.” Hugh chuckled, leaning back against his partner as he tapped out of his messages and tossed the PADD onto the desk. 

"Oh?” The blonde nipped lightly at his neck as his hands began to roam.

“But, traditionally, there is less clothing involved.” He turned around to pull Paul against him.

Leaning their foreheads together as he looked into the doctor’s eyes, Paul smiled. “I didn’t realise we were going for a traditional form of personal time.”

“Mm-mm. As old as the world.” He unfastened his partner’s jacket and tugged it off.

Stepping back, the scientist stripped off his shirt as he smirked. “Which world is that?” he asked, hands trailing down his pale, scarred skin to rest of the waistline of his trousers; he’d taken his cuff off already and the sight of his bare wrist was oddly exciting.

“The only one that counts.” Hugh replied, almost absent-mindedly as his attention was captured by his partner’s hands. Moving in, he unbuttoned them and pushed the last of Paul’s clothing down. “Perfect.” He breathed, his skin hot as he drank in the sight.

“Come on then.” Paul was blushing as he began to get Hugh naked, and the low thrum of arousal in the doctor’s body was turned up a notch as their bare skin was plastered together in a tight embrace and Paul initiated a deep kiss.

One hand sliding down to Paul’s ass, the other to the back of his neck, Hugh walked his partner over to the bed and pushed him down. “Coming?” Paul asked with a grin, and Hugh crawled on top of him with a smile of his own. 

Possibly his favourite thing about sex with Paul was how often they ended up laughing. Their bond was always stronger when they were doing this and it was as though it wiped out all their common sense and inhibitions as it grew; Hugh barely smiled in public and even in lazy moments with Paul, his smiles tended to be more content than manic. And this really was a problem; Hugh had seen himself laughing and he really didn’t rate it as an attractive look, but Paul’s attitude and their chatter during sex ruined his ability to care about how he looked.

“Why are you thinking?” Paul scowled at him, the grumpy look spoiling Hugh’s nice, if slightly bemused thoughts and so he began to kiss it away. 

“I’m just happy.” He replied as he wiggled down to nip at Paul’s neck. “It’s weird how happy this makes me.”

“No it isn’t.” And Hugh couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped; he had actually heard Paul rolling his eyes there. “Anyway, you’re supposed to know about hormones and stuff, aren’t you?”

“Sex is typically a feel-good activity.”

“You can feel me good.” Paul chuckled as Hugh groaned. He could have guessed that was coming! “And you should know about why this feels unless you’re a fraud, but I seem to recall you ruined that guy’s career a while back for claiming you were one.”

“Can’t work as a surgeon if you can’t hold a scalpel.” He sighed as he began to work a hickey into Paul’s skin; he didn’t want to think about Richards right now.

“You’re such a vengeful little brat sometimes.” Paul groaned, his tone undeniably fond. “Shit, don’t actually leave marks this time.”

“But they look so good on you.” He breathed before pulling away to lick a nipple.

“I’m sure you’ll get over it.” Paul replied, rolling them over so he could sit on Hugh’s belly.

The doctor didn’t reply, simply tracing his fingers down Paul’s chest, pinching his nipple and the moving on to skim his length. With a groan, the blond lowered himself to kiss his partner, legs sliding alongside Hugh’s as he rutted down; the doctor took the chance to get a grip on his partner’s ass and work to get more friction. The slide of sweaty skin had never been more enjoyable and Paul brought one leg back up to rest beside Hugh’s hip, using the better position to balance as he grabbed both their cocks in one hand and stroked. 

Hugh threw his head back into the pillow and moaned quietly, bucking up into his partner’s hand as he tightened his own grip on Paul’s backside; after months alone and only the memory of Paul to get off to, this was not going to take long.

“Shit.” Paul murmured as he stretched to kiss at Hugh’s jawline, panting over it in hot breaths. “I missed you. Missed this.”

“I did say we can do it over the visual coms.” Hugh laughed breathlessly, though he honestly understood what Paul meant. He damn well enjoyed spending time with his soulmate, but missing the sex was far easier to admit to, even when it was just the two of them.

“I’m not letting the Imperial Starfleet see me less than fully dressed anywhere other than the medbay.” Paul grunted, and Hugh could feel the smile against his skin. 

Hugh grinned and rolled them over, pushing his hips down as Paul’s legs wrapped around his waist. “If you wanted to do this in the medbay, you just had to ask.” He teased, fully aware that even trying to flirt properly in the medbay could be suicide, depending on who saw them. 

“Oh sure.” Paul was probably aiming for a light tone, but the moan at the end ruined the effect and Hugh rather loved it. “The threat of torture and death really does it for me.”

“Perfect little Terran.” He joked, then reached between their bodies to take them both in hand. “Or should I say not so litt-”

“No, you shouldn’t!” His chuckles were fast and breathy, and he shifted enough to pull Hugh down into a kiss.

With the arousal burning through his body, Hugh allowed Paul to dominate their kiss; his teeth tugging at the doctor’s bottom lip frequently in between the blond’s determination to map out his partner’s entire mouth with his tongue. Instead, he built up a rhythm, relishing in the muffled whimpers that began to emerge from Paul’s throat as they both lost themselves in the overwhelming sensations. 

Paul pulled away suddenly, biting his lip as he groaned; Hugh squeezed his hand and a moment later, his scientist came, his legs clamping around Hugh in an almost bruising grip. The rush along the bond pulled Hugh along into his own orgasm, as it nearly always did and he pressed his face into Paul’s neck, breathing in the strong smell of sweat as he shuddered.

“Fuck.” Paul muttered as his legs fell heavily to the mattress, one warm hand rubbing over Hugh’s back.

The doctor gave a grunt, but couldn’t yet summon the strength to move. There really was nothing like sex with his soulmate; as their bond strengthened, Hugh struggled to separate their feelings during intercourse. He sometimes considered keeping his shields in place to see what it was like without the mental connection, but in the four years they had been together, he’d never actually managed to hold the barrier up once they got going.

Paul shifted beneath him and wriggled enough that he could use a foot to push Hugh away, and the other man sighed. “You’ll need a toothbrush replicating.” He realised as his thoughts began to sort themselves out and he turned his mind to getting some sleep.

“You saying my breath stinks?” Paul asked, his words slow as lethargy was likely taking over.

“Come on.” He leaned over for a final kiss, before getting to his feet and heading into the washroom to clean up. “I don’t suppose you have any other clothing with you.” He said as he wiped himself down.

“I was kidnapped from outside my lab. All I have is my PADD.” Paul wrinkled his nose in an expression that was oddly adorable as he rolled off the mattress and staggered over to his soulmate. 

“Here.” Hugh passed a cloth over to his partner before heading back into the main room for pyjamas. Their waistlines were close enough in size that the shorts would fit fine, but the t-shirt was going to be baggy across the shoulders. He tossed a set over to Paul before tugging his own on.

“Not that I’m complaining.” The scientist began in a tone that was filled with curiosity. “But why are we getting dressed? I like the idea of your bare skin next to mine when I sleep.”

The thought surprised Hugh, who hadn’t been expecting something so sentimental. Despite having been in a relationship for four years, the men tended to avoid saying anything affectionate; it wasn’t that Hugh didn’t feel a great fondness for Paul. In fact, he’d been rereading old classics and wondering if his emotions fitted the idea of love or not; ancient, forbidden literature that he got a genuine thrill out of reading, but the discussions of the passionate emotion of love was always one he had struggled to understand. From Ovid’s fanciful poems of the ancient gods to the often confusing pages of Shakespeare, Hugh had spent years gathering what stories he could; now they were all archived on a separate data card that he kept in a hidden safe he’d fitted in the washroom. When he was on Earth, he had been spending evenings reading them aloud to Paul, who had learnt to wait until the end of a chapter or stanza to ask about meanings. 

Although they could feel emotions along their bond without any struggle, Hugh didn’t recognise why the rush of emotion had overtaken Paul without any insight into the context around it; sometimes Paul send a warm and deeply happy feeling along their bond, which left Hugh a little breathless with the emotion. When that happened, he generally tried to com his soulmate to understand what was so good, even though it was usually that one of his hybrids had been doing well; occasionally, it was something slightly more obscure like when one of the scientists who had been trying to defame Paul had gotten involved in a scandal and had to turn his attention to paying attorney fees, or when Paul’s brother had finally admitted that he’d found his soulmate, or that one time someone had brought Paul a large tub of his favourite coffee beans as a bribe. But regardless of what the situation was, Hugh couldn’t quite get over how strange it was to be happy simply because someone else was.

So he had been trying to reread the classics with this in mind, but it was actually a little startling to realise that Paul might be struggling with similar feelings. 

“I prefer to be dressed here in case there’s an emergency and we need to get moving.” He explained, though he skipped mentioning how several crew members who had argued with their captain had gone missing during the night hours recently; he didn’t want to be dragged butt-naked from his bed.

Paul simply nodded and accepted the toothbrush Hugh had replicated. “Thanks.”

“I had a message earlier to let you know that Lorca wants you outside his ready room at 0900 tomorrow.” Hugh remembered as they stood side by side and brushed their teeth. “I’ve set the alarm for 0800 so you can get sorted and have a nutrition bar before going.”

Paul nodded again to leaning over the sink to spit. “What’s Lorca like? As a captain?”

“Strict. He has very little patience and if it wasn’t for the rumours about Burnham, I would have said he was the perfect Terran soldier.”

“Rumours?” Paul raised his brow as he dropped the brush into the pot on the counter.

Hugh snorted before spitting and straightening up. “You really don’t listen to anything outside your own lab, so you?” It was pretty funny how much of a bubble Paul lived in. “Apparently he has her name on his wrist and will do anything to get her.”

“The Emperor’s daughter? Surely he should be trying to impress the Emperor to stand a chance. How does that stop him from being the perfect soldier?”

Hugh rolled his eyes at the naïve idea. “You really think Lorca wants to share? You think the Emperor might be happy to?” He headed back into the bedroom, Paul padded audibly along behind him. “In public they don’t show any problems but if you listen to rumours…”

“Share?” Paul sounded confused. “Burnham’s not a possession to share. She came by once when we had some space creature trying to eat our dry stores; she’s not someone I’d want to insult in any way.” Hugh felt a slight ripple of fear push through their bond, a grimace on his face until Hugh leaned in to press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Paul had some sweet thoughts sometimes.

“She’s been raised by the Emperor. I imagine she’s used to being considered a possession by her.” Hugh dismissed, he didn’t really care about Burnham beyond the rumours; some claimed she was going to take Lorca down and were waiting for the fireworks, others claimed she was going to rise against her mother and she would rule the empire with Lorca, others that she would destroy both of them with a coldness that would show the rebels exactly who they were up against. Hugh honestly didn’t care as long as she didn’t destroy the ISS Buran while he was on it.

Paul shrugged and dropped onto the bed, kicking the blanket over to get comfortable. Hugh took a moment to appreciate the sight of his own clothing on Paul’s soft, pale body as the man settled down. 

“Lights to sleep cycle.” He instructed the computer as he lay down beside his soulmate. Then reaching out to grasp touch Paul’s hand with his own, Hugh succumbed to sleep with an ease that was almost paradoxical in comparison with how he normally slept with someone else in the room.

However he awoke sometime later when a noise disturbed him. For a moment, he held perfectly still, his body trained to not give away when he emerged from sleep. There it was again, and it took Hugh a long moment to realise that the noise wasn’t an intruder, but the muffled sound of someone gasping. 

The doctor shifted over to see that his soulmate was missing, and the misery that flooded their bond let Hugh know that Paul was likely crying to himself in the washroom. He rolled back over, easing a light shield into position so that the scientist wouldn’t be able to tell Hugh was awake; he didn’t like it when people cried.

But the grief was unbearable. Hugh glared at the far wall with dark eyes before pulling himself up. “Quarter-lights.” He grunted, standing up and heading into the washroom as the gentle light filled the room.

With only to light in the main room to see by, Hugh spotted Paul sitting on the floor; his back against the shower wall, face hidden in his arms which were around his knees. Watching in silence, Hugh debated what to do: he could go back to bed and leave Paul to it, as he had no knowledge of how to help in this situation; he could remind Paul that tears were a weakness no one could afford; he could administer a hypo to calm him down…

“I made a mistake.” Paul choked out, and Hugh took an involuntary step into the room. “I made a mistake and it killed more than sixty people.”

The doctor considered pointing out that he’d killed a fair few people the years because they’d been unable to pay for medical treatment, or because they’d pissed off the wrong person and he’d been ordered to misdiagnose an illness, but he suspected that Paul didn’t want to compare stories at the moment. Instead, he crouched next to his partner and reached out with a hesitant hand.

“I hope they don’t destroy my mushrooms.” He whispered in a strangled voice. “After killing sixty eight people.”

“Paul…” He wondered if the man would get a medal for killing so many; if he impressed people enough over the next few days then there was a very real chance for it. 

He didn’t get a chance to say anything though; Paul shifted onto his knees then half-threw himself into Hugh’s arms. As he hadn’t been expecting this move, Hugh landed on his ass, hitting the wall as Paul began to sob.

“Shh…” Hugh hushed him, rubbing his back while wishing he’d gone for a sedative. 

He wasn’t trained for this.

\------

Paul groaned as he woke up and pushed himself up, the soft light brightening as it detected his movement. Beside him and tangled up in the blanket he had taken completely lay Hugh. Paul didn’t even try to stop the grin that spread over his face, looking down at the t-shirt stretched slightly across his chest, which was moving gently as he slept on.

He stood quietly up to get his PADD and looked at the time. 0735, so he still had time before the alarm went off. Grabbing a towel from over the desk chair and some clean underwear from Hugh’s wardrobe, Paul disappeared into the shower. He took the alone time to get his thoughts in order, practising some phrases in a soft voice with the hope that they’d come naturally to him when Lorca spoke to him later. 

It was best not to mention that the deaths had been accidental, he reminded himself with a shudder; incompetence was always punished. No more blubbing over the fact that he’d killed a lot of people; he’d cried once yesterday afternoon after Hugh had gone back to work and once again last night so he really needed to be over it now. In fact, if anyone asked him about their deaths he should just say that they were incompetent for not realising they were feeling off earlier on; he wasn’t entirely sure how the poisoning felt as he couldn’t exact talk to the animals he’d been working with, and they hadn’t made their way up to alien test subjects yet. 

He was going to have to rhapsodise over how brilliant this power system was going to be to make sure they didn’t kill him. It wasn’t ready to be officially presented yet, but he wasn’t going to hold back when his life was on the line for some possible problem over viability that he hadn’t fully figured out yet. He’d tell them about any issues he found with such a large power source once he’d given them time to acknowledge that he needed to be alive to make it work. 

However, Paul wasn’t sure if he should mentioned the deadly mushrooms he was also working on. Pros were that he might get to keep working on it, despite having killed people; also that they might realise the importance of allowing him to grow his own mushrooms, something that might be easier without Straal telling them how unnecessary it was; cons were that reminding them of the potency of the spores might get the fungi all taken away to be destroyed; or even that someone else might continue his work and put their own name to his efforts.

“You’re up early.” Hugh was leaning in the doorway of the washroom, watching Paul shower.

He cringed slightly, uncomfortable with the idea of turning his back to someone, even though it was Hugh, but also not wanting to stand with everything on display while his partner was dressed. He quickly rinsed the rest of the soap off and stepped out to wrap himself up in the towel. 

“I had a lazy day yesterday and I don’t normally sleep for more than six hours anyway.” He explained, standing awkwardly by the counter.

Hugh frowned slightly, but Paul knew how to distract him. He stepped forwards and pulled him into a kiss, moaning slightly as cool hands slid over his back. “You know, I don’t like leaving you so free of marks.” Hugh was scowling at his pale skin, with the single hickey he’d given Paul before the scientist had objected. 

“Thanks for listening even though I didn’t explain.” Paul kissed his nose, sniggering when Hugh wrinkled it in response and stepped back. “But I didn’t want to face the captain and this important visitor today with marks that link me to you, just in case.”

“You’re an idiot… but you may have a point.” Hugh sighed, before pulling off his own top. “You can get breakfast from the food resequencer if you like, or there are nutrition bars in the cupboard to the left of the chair if you prefer them.”

Paul nodded and headed off to get dressed as Hugh began to shower. He opted for nutrition bars, as food from the resequencer always tasted a bit off and pulled on some underwear before sitting at Hugh’s desktop eat. He did get coffee from the resequencer though, as he needed caffeine and didn’t really want to go to the mess hall unless he really had to.

“I hope you plan to put a bit more on than that.” Hugh chuckled once he was out the shower and drying off. 

“You don’t think I’ll impress them like this?” He smirked, slouching down as he glanced up at Hugh.

Hugh laughed and tossed a small towel over onto Paul’s head, and he must have followed it over because a moment later, Paul’s hair was getting towel-dried. “You won’t have clean clothes either.” He heard the doctor say as the rubbing slowed down.

“I didn’t exactly do much in the clothes I was wearing yesterday. They’ll be fine.” He assured him, standing up and lightly smacking Hugh’s bare ass as he passed to go get his clothes, then squawking loudly as his partner jabbed at his kidneys and tickled his sides. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he laughed.

“You ready for this meeting?” Hugh asked, his hands slowing and coming to rest around his waist.

With the warmth of his naked partner against his back, Paul sighed. “I have no idea who I’m meeting, or why Lorca was smirking about it. It’s going to be an enforcer, isn’t it?”

“Well…” Hugh’s voice was reluctant as he answered. “We did get a new Security Chief last week; Lieutenant Landry.”

“What’s she like?” He asked, pulling away as he pushed his growing fear down. He grabbed his clothes and began to tug them on.

“She’s pretty smitten with Lorca, but completely heartless with everyone else.” Hugh started to dress as well, covering up his alluring body with the cold uniform of a medic.

“I wonder if they’re going to question me.” He pulled his armour over his head and snapped the links shut. “I’m not sure what I’ll say.”

“Most important thing to remember is no apologising.” Hugh said as he fastened up his own armour. “I don’t care if you did something wrong and the Emperor herself is demanding an explanation. Make no excuses for what happened and don’t say that you are sorry.”

“What if Lorca and whoever I’m meeting with demand one?” Paul asked, stomach churning as he pulled on his boots.

“If they do then it’s a blatant attempt to make you show weakness. Don’t apologise. Offer up solutions instead.” Hugh stepped closer, grasping the back of Paul’s neck with a strong hand as he looked into his eyes. “Talk to them about your poisonous mushrooms or talk about the power core you’re making, but don’t say ‘sorry my mistake killed all those people’ because they will tear you apart for it.”

“I know.” Paul assured him, but it was the scientist could feel his partner’s fear through their bond and that stopped him from snapping in response. Turning away, he pulled on his fingerless gloves and picked up his PADD. “You free to join me in a stroll to the ready room?”

“I’ll take you to the right corridor.” Hugh replied, fully dressed as he headed out the door. “But I’m not going to knock on the door for you.”

Paul managed a weak grin in response, but then settled his face into a comfortable, blank mask as they set off. There were numerous people milling about as they headed to shifts, but no one was chatting as they went; the silence was an odd difference between an Imperial Starfleet ship and a Starfleet lab, but he actually preferred it

“Down there. Third door on the left, but there could be a guard outside anyway.”

“Thanks.” Paul looked into his partner’s eyes for a moment, but didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to say anything that might be overheard, so he straightened up and headed in the pointed direction.

There was a guard waiting outside; he glanced at Paul slowly then tapped the wall panel and, after a response, allowed the scientist to enter.

The lights were low in the room, and Lorca was stood behind his desk. In the corner stood a woman with guards standing either side of her; he didn’t recognise her, but her clothing marked her as high class enough that Paul saluted.

“Stamets.” Paul turned his attention back to Lorca. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“No.” Paul kept his answers short, feeling distinctly uncomfortable as he waited.

“Do you know who I am?” The woman said suddenly, cutting off Lorca, who had opened his mouth to speak.

“No sir.” He replied, resisting the urge to take a step back as she approached him.

She was smirking as she looked him over. “I am your Emperor.” The gentle tone of her voice was honestly more terrifying than if she’s been making blatant threats. 

Paul’s eyes widened for a moment and he quickly glanced at her left wrist, which was uncovered, before looking over into the corner of the room. Everyone knew the Emperor had no soulmate and she flaunted the fact that fate had no power over her. Paul shuddered to imagine a life without his soul-bond; he’d gotten used to having Hugh in his life, regardless of the fact that they usually only spoke over the coms as his partner had been taken into the military side of Starfleet after passing all his exams. The idea that someone was not only happy to wake up with no name on her wrist, but took it as a mark of honour that she wasn’t encumbered by another person that she didn’t chose… he felt sick just thinking about it.

"I have a use for you, Doctor Stamets.” She purred and Paul couldn’t help stepping back from her, his jaw clenched too tightly to reply. “I want to know all about your new power core.”

He wanted to object that it wasn’t ready, that it would be some time before it could be used because tests showed that using a large core drained power from the mycelial network in a way and at a rate that it couldn’t recover easily from… But with her dark, cold eyes looking into own, he could only nod.

It was fine, he decided as she started talking softly to Lorca. It wasn’t ideal, but it would take time to build a power core and he’d have time to fix this problem. He dropped his mental shields and searched for Hugh, needing his strength to remain standing and he trembled with his knees pressed together to keep from collapsing. He felt a flicker of concern from the doctor, then the man must have understood what Paul wanted because he felt Hugh pushing energy and courage at him; it wasn’t something they’d done before, and Paul would definitely want to look into it later, but for the moment it gave him enough confidence to stand tall. After all, this was something he had over their Emperor, who was so unbending that fate had been unable to split her soul in two… if she had one at all.

Too soon, she strutted back over to him, her smirk wider than it had been. “Specialist Stamets. You are the newest crew member of the ISS Buran.”

“What? Wait, I mean. No, just… what?” He asked, but shut his mouth again before he accidently insulted the Emperor and got himself killed; he didn’t want to join the space-faring side of Starfleet.

“While aboard Captain Lorca’s vessel, you will build a power core for my new flagship.” She continued, completely ignoring his stuttering. “You will then communicate with my engineers to integrate the new system into my vessel.”

She nodded in Lorca’s direction, who held up a PADD. Paul bit the inside of his lip to keep from objecting. However, he couldn’t stop the slight scowl that settled on his face; he was sure Hugh had said Lorca and the Emperor were at odds over Burnham. Were the rumours false? It certainly seemed as though Lorca held the position of trusted advisor, at least to the scientist’s eyes; or were the rumours true and they simply kept their arguments out of their professional lives? Regardless, he shouldn’t think about it; the Emperor’s dark, soulless eyes seemed almost capable of picking random thoughts out of his mind and he didn’t want to get in any trouble.

“And you will remain here under Lorca’s eye while you do this.” Then she looked him up and down before holding a hand out. The guard stepped over and handed her a small box without a word. “For your skills in creating and deploying poisons…”

Paul suddenly realised what was in the small box and he threw his inexplicable terror of the item across their bond to Hugh, as he knew he couldn’t show it here.

“The Empire rewards you with the Master of Poisons medal.” She fastened it to his chest, and Paul had to focus on not vomiting over her. “For a truly impressive feat. Your work in that particular field shall be continued by the best, hand-picked mycologists and you will consult with them to ensure progress.”

He was being rewarded for killing people, and this wasn’t a medal that he could chose to not wear; it was a part of his uniform now. Not only that, he realised as the Emperor’s words began to register, but his work was being continued; that was something of a relief, although he wasn’t sure if their opinion of the best mycologists and his own would match up.

Once she had left, Lorca handed over the badge he would now have to wear as well, marking him as an active member of a starship. By the time he got back to Hugh’s quarters, Paul was beyond ready to go back to bed; the adrenaline from the meeting had drained and the scientist was suddenly exhausted.

\------

It turned out that blackmailing the quartermaster to give Hugh a double bed wasn’t difficult; after all, he was the woman’s medical officer and the one she had to admit certain things to if she wanted treatment. And the room used to be a twin until Hugh’s roommate had been killed on an away mission early in their deployment so there was enough space. 

However, over the next few months, Hugh found that having a long-distance relationship where they met up once every four months for a handful of intense days then returned to talking over the coms was very different to living with someone. 

Paul had more than a few annoying habits, from forgetting to come back to their cabin at the end of his shift to the snoring that he’d never noticed before, because when they’d only been together for a couple of days at a time, they’d both been slept the sleep of the well-fucked; the scientist also had a tendency to get up in the middle of the night to tap ideas out on his PADD, as though his brain came up with its best ideas when he was half asleep; then his eating habits… he ranged from days where he seemed to eat non-stop to days where food simply didn’t occur to him; plus he still complained about both Hugh’s musical preferences and prowess.

And then there was the attention Lorca was suddenly paying the medic. 

In the months since Paul had joined the Buran, Lorca had had Hugh assist in the questioning of four rebel captives; the man seemed determined to single-handedly wipe out the rebel factions, refusing to share his information with anyone except the Emperor. Unfortunately, assisting really meant keeping them alive and getting them talking.

Hugh sighed as he stared at his own PADD, rereading his notes. Humans had never managed to make a truly perfect ‘truth serum’ because self-deception was such a deep-rooted part of their psyche that it simply wasn’t effective. However, there had been some different attempts dating back centuries; the most recent being about a hundred years ago. After the agoniser booths had been developed by Doctor Phlox and Major Reed, they had replaced the use of narcotics in interrogations. 

However, the rebels they had encountered were either capable of retreating far enough into their minds that the pain didn’t register on any conscious level or, likely those who had proven incapable of this, some of the rebels had booby-trapped their own bodies to escape; from what Hugh could tell, the bombs seemed to be set to only detonate when they detected stimulation in random nerve clusters at high frequency. Lorca had been furious when two earlier captives had blown themselves up and damaged the torture chambers, and his bad mood hadn’t dissipated when Doctor Bradshaw had explained how difficult it was to detect the devices implanted in them. 

This meant that Lorca had commanded Hugh to looking into narco-interrogation and matching the drugs to the different species. So far, he’d decided on a solution that contained a high dose of methamphetamine in it, which was once used to stimulate emotions and memories, for the Vulcans; from what he’d read of experiments done on humans, if it was given in the right doses then the subjects couldn’t help talking, however they had been able to lie. At the moment, Hugh was hoping that having a powerful rush of emotions would overwhelm the Vulcan mind and prevent them from thinking up lies in time. However, they hadn’t had any Vulcan prisoners yet so he hadn’t had the chance to try it out. 

What he had used on three of their captives had been a concoction with varying levels of barbiturates. He’d found that the subjects’ higher brain centres had been affected, starting with the cerebral cortex; but he’d been hesitant about how much to use. The drugs had effects that ranged from sedating the subject to killing them and Hugh didn’t want to spend time in the agoniser booths himself if he accidently killed a valuable prisoner. 

So far, the most effective method involved giving enough amytal to the prisoner, allowing them to sleep and then giving them methamphetamine when they became semi-conscious and beginning the interrogation there. When they became too aware of what was going on, they got another dose and the cycle began again. However, they didn’t get long to question the prisoner and the more often they were drugged, the quicker they could force their minds to a more lucid state until they reached a tipping point and fell into a coma.

The fourth (or third, if he was counting chronologically, because he’d gone back to his original attempts after trying something different) he’d given a mixture of barbiturates, stimulants and ataraxic, based on a series of experiments done at the start of the twenty-second century which had had a large range of results, but the andorian had spent nearly three hours on the floor, in pain and barely able to move, occasionally babbling claims that may have been true, but Hugh had been unable to say if they were or not. Lorca had told him to keep the file until they got some test subjects sent out so Hugh could practise until he got the proportions right.

For some reason, the notion made him sick to his stomach. Perhaps it had been watching the scans of the andorian as his pain level had risen while he had writhed, but it had been hard to keep in mind that he had been an alien enemy and not just a person. 

He lowered at his PADD as he looked over the drug ratios; it was unfair to blame Paul for this change in circumstance, but sometimes it was hard not to when he remembered how Lorca hadn’t even known his name the two times that Hugh had spoken to him before his soulmate came aboard. Typically, Starfleet dismissed soulmarks as unimportant outside of ID issues, generally taking the stance that just because two people were fated to be together, didn’t mean they actually liked one another; but Lorca’s mind apparently followed a different track. 

As it was, there were two things that stopped Hugh from constantly lashing out at his partner: firstly the fact that Lorca was coming down harder on Paul’s work than Hugh’s, demanding better results at a faster rate in what the doctor assumed was an attempt to keep the Emperor appeased; secondly was that there were some positive elements to having Paul around. When the man did get back first, he always sent Hugh a message to say he’d brought a tray from the mess with him; he actually really enjoyed watching his soulmate piss off all the senior officers with his attitude; the regular sex was good too… but Hugh found he honestly most liked being able to feel Paul’s feelings along their bond during his day-to-day life. It was different to anything he’d ever experienced before, feeling a flare of fierce joy and knowing Paul would be in a good mood when he got back, or even feeling defeat along the bond and knowing they probably going to fuck as Paul tried to distance himself from whatever problem he had encountered. 

But despite this, Hugh was still struggling. He’d been sat at his desk in the med-unit office for more than an hour now, trying to find the motivation to really get going with his work again… and this was not acceptable. He hated the thought of developing drugs to make people spill their secrets while crying in agony, he hated the knowledge that he was going to have to work through likely a high number of test subjects to get it right, he hated how this guilt was lapping over into other areas of his life and leaving desolation in its wake. He even hated that Paul was too busy trying to keep Lorca happy to always be there in Hugh’s off-shift hours.

And recently he’d been thinking about reapplying for surgery. As a fully qualified doctor with an active role on an Imperial Star Ship who had simply postponed the surgery he was supposed to have had two years earlier, he could likely get the operation booked for within the next six months. He’d be able to do his work without battling his overwhelming emotions every day, lessening the risk of a mistake which could one day kill a vital prisoner and so get himself and Paul killed.

However he knew fine well Paul would object to this; while the doctors undergoing the surgery always survived, it wasn’t guaranteed that their soulmate would. If the pair had a mid-range bond then it would be torn apart as the emotions were surgically severed and the shock killed the partner; those with a weaker range survived because their bond wasn’t strong enough to do any damage when it broke, and their brain chemistry was unaltered by it. Those with a strong bond, like the one he believed he shared with Paul, survived because the surgery wasn’t enough to sever their bond. There were only two documented cases of this happening, because very few beings were willing to open their heart and mind to a medic, but in both cases, the medic had retained some emotion; as though something of themselves transferred to their partner during the operation and was only returned later. Of course, the medic’s ability to feel emotions was vastly diminished, but it wasn’t gone. The bond protected something and that idea made the surgery more tempting than ever before; if he could still have this contentment with Paul, annoying as he could be, even if it wasn’t so overwhelming, it would be worth it to no longer feel the utter horror of what he was having to do the rest of the time. 

He sighed, saving the work he had done and dropping the PADD to the desk as he leaned back in the chair to stare blankly at the ceiling. But he picked it back up as it chirped a moment later.

‘ _Had an accident with the core and it’s burnt all the flesh off my right hand._ ’

It was from Paul, and Hugh groaned as he pulled himself up. His partner must have been working with Lorca to be shielded enough that the doctor didn’t feel any pain from him; it was what he normally did otherwise Hugh would be in a terrible mood after receiving feedback from Paul’s own frustration with having the captain over his shoulder all day.

When Paul arrived, Hugh winced at the mess. Leading him into a side room, his first task was getting him stripped to his undershirt without causing him too much pain.

“Do I even want to ask what happened?” He grumbled as he looked at it with a frown.

“You’re in a bad mood.” Paul observed as he hopped onto the single bio-bed in the room. “What’s wrong?”

“Just…” Hugh sighed as he picked up a tricorder. “I’ve been thinking about having the surgery again.” He admitted, knowing Paul wasn’t going to like it.

“Why?”

“Because my life is shit when I have to feel everything.” He retorted, his temper surging as he scowled at the screen. “You have no idea how hard this is.”

“But…” Paul’s voice was hesitant as he spoke. They were both aware that fighting fire with fire ended with them both burnt and Paul would hide in his lab for days, sleeping at his desk rather than in their bed. It had happened more than once in the time they’d served on board together and Hugh hated it; but somethings were too important to let them slide.

“No buts.” He straightened his body, standing tall as he tried to explain. “The work I am doing, it’s not like when you accidently killed all those people and got a medal for it. This is a trial and error approach where people are dying in agony and I have to watch them.”

“Hugh…” He’s looked painfully awkward as he sat there in his undershirt, one damaged hand held out as he stared at his cuffed left wrist, visibly struggling for words. “Our bond… If you… I don’t want you to feel nothing anymore and-”

“I want to feel nothing. It has to be better than this!” He tried to explain, in desperation.

“Hugh, please.” Paul’s eyes were shining as he looked into Hugh’s. “The thought of only feeling a void down our bond… can’t you understand why that’s upsetting?”

“Of course I do.” Hugh hissed as he put the scanner down and picked up the regenerator. “But I mean it when I say that I can’t keep doing this. It’s too much.”

“So tell Lorca that.”

Hugh scoffed as he began to repair Paul’s skin. “Fantastic idea. Then he’ll stick you in an agoniser until I agree to keep going.”

“I’m doing work for the Emperor.” The scientist objected, his brow furrowed. “He can’t do anything to me without pissing her off.”

The doctor sighed as he watched Paul wiggle his fingers. “I know she scares you, but Lorca isn’t intimidated by her.”

Paul dropped his hand to his lap, cocking his head to the side as he looked curiously at Hugh. “That sounds like it means something. What are you getting at?”

“It means…” He dropped his voice, stepping closer to stand between Paul’s knees. “I can’t say for sure, but I think he’s planning something.”

“That’s a bit vague.” Paul muttered, scooting to the edge of the bio-bed to wrap his legs around the doctor.

“It’s just… comments he’s made when he’d interrogating people.” He explained, leaning down to speak into his ear. Despite being in a separate room, he didn’t want to be overheard. “He rants about her letting aliens over the borders, that he’s the only one who cares about keep our territory in check and enforcing out boundaries.”

“He’s not entirely wrong.” Paul replied in a small, unsure voice. “I mean… he’s had to obliterate several systems that used to be ours because she’s pulled the forces out.”

Hugh startled slightly, surprised to hear Paul supporting anything Lorca said. “You think he’s right? Look at what she’s doing though. The Klingons are going to fall and they will either submit like the betazoids did or die.”

“I’m not sure. I only know what he tells me when he turns up to say I’m not doing enough.” Paul sighed and sagged against him. “They both scare me.”

“You’re not alone.” He actually found them more irritating than frightening, but Paul didn’t need to hear that.

“For now.” The scientist pressed his face into Hugh’s neck, muffling his words. “But you’re going to get your emotions cut off and even if we both survive, I’ll have no one to turn to.”

Hugh felt a stab of guilt as he rubbed Paul’s back. “It’s a shame there’s nowhere the Empire doesn’t go.” He sighed. “I’m not going to leave and join the rebels just so I don’t have to do this anymore. It’s difficult, but we have nowhere else to go. We can’t escape the Empire.”

“We could always go be pirates.” Voice still soft, Hugh could feel a slight hint of amusement from the man. 

“You’d be terrible at it. Too much plundering and no time for research.” He chuckled, pressing a kiss to his ear. “Come on. Got to get back to work.”

“Don’t do it.” Paul returned to his pleas. “Just… give it another few years.”

“What good will that do?”

“This might pass. You’re only thirty. You’re too young to wipe your mind like that.” He tightened his legs and Hugh went to step back. “Do this and you’re a coward who’s just giving up.”

Hugh scowled at that. “I’m not a coward.”

“When you’re planning to cut out your emotions rather than trying to get through this? I’m not convinced.” Paul wrapped his arms around Hugh’s neck to pull him close and glare into his eyes. “You’re as good as running away.”

“Fuck you.”

“Is there anything in your notes about what it does to sexual appetite? I may have to get toys and a separate bed if you go for it.” He was probably aiming for an innocent tone of voice, except for the undertone of hurt and anger. 

“I’ll think about it.” He said, but his own flare of anger was already draining away. “It’s not that I want to feel nothing all the time, just while I’m working.”

“I thought you were working with drugs for sorting emotions out. Can’t you find something to tide you over until Lorca backs off?” Paul asked, his grip on Hugh gentling, one hand beginning to caress his neck and jawline. “Something a little less permanent.”

“I don’t think there are any modern papers or studies… but I’ll work through the old ones and see if I can find an alternative.” He sighed, before leaning in his kiss his partner. It was going to be even more work, but at least the end result of this project would be palatable. 

“ _Doctor Culber and Specialist Stamets, report to the Captain’s ready room._ ”

“Oh, I meant to say. When Lorca left me he said we’re going on an away mission with Landry and Harper. Something to do with rebel spies on Talvath.” Paul began to pull his armour on, leaving off the ruined jacket. “I’m going run by our cabin first though.”

“I’ll come with.” Hugh said, putting his instruments away and leading Paul out. “I wonder why you’re coming.”

“Cover story maybe?” Paul shrugged as they set off. “There are loads of interesting specimens of fungi down there. I’d love to bring some back to look into using for the power core. I’m wondering if hybrids might be a way to still access the network in a more stable way.”

“Really?” 

Hugh hid his grin and they headed off to their cabin, Paul explaining in detail his work on hybrids and the potential to breed plants more suited to their needs. An away mission with Paul, a breath of fresh air and that in itself was something to look forward to.


	3. Chapter 3

Paul groaned softly in his ear as Hugh reached down to scratch a finger down his trouser seam. They had been together for exactly twelve years and the doctor knew how to win any minor fight; his partner was a well-explored map of erogenous zones and Hugh knew them all well. While the scientist allowed him to win over small issues with his body, or to distract him from larger ones for a time, neither of them could let anything major go unspoken for long in favour of sex, no matter how good it was.

But for now, Hugh was happy to drive him to distraction and leave their argument behind; Paul was getting that rash on his arm looked at properly, under a more detailed scanner than the medical tricorder Hugh had in their cabin, regardless of whether he thought he had time to do so or not.

“We don’t do this often enough anymore.” Paul muttered as he pulled back and gazed at Hugh’s bruised lips. 

“You’re only on the Buran every other month.” Hugh reminded him, pressing forwards into another soft kiss to stop the comment becoming a complaint. “It’s your own fault.”

“I am both very happy that the Discovery is growing the mushrooms I need, and also very envious.” The scientist grumbled when they parted for breath and Hugh could feel the tangle of emotions that seeped through their bond whenever Paul stopped to think properly about it. Hugh was slightly bitter that Paul couldn’t grow them on the Buran and so spend more time here too, but he didn’t like to get worked up about it when they did have time together. 

“Fuss about that later.” Hugh instructed as he kissed his way along his partner’s jaw. Paul sighed and shifted closer, his lips connecting with Hugh’s collarbone as he pushed the doctor’s head up. 

“Lorca to Specialist Stamets.” The scientist pulled back at their captain’s voice, his pupils blown wide and his lips red from their kissing while Hugh ground his teeth together; Paul had only been back a week and they had both been so busy that they hadn’t done anything more exciting than sleeping in their bed. He didn’t want Lorca interrupting them for anything short of a life or death emergency, and even then it would depend on whose life was on the line. 

The blond twisted slightly to press the com panel he was pressed against. “Go ahead, captain.” It seemed Paul didn’t share his opinion, and Hugh sighed as his forehead landed on the man’s collarbone.

“Captain Tilly has contacted us.” Lorca half spat her name, Tilly had spent too much time as an Ensign fawning over Paul’s research for the Buran’s captain to give her the respect she was due. Paul had commented more than once that it would get her into trouble and while most people feared her viciousness, especially now that the Emperor had taken her on as an advisor and almost as a comrade-in-arms, Lorca forever saw the young girl she had once been. “The new batch of spores are ready to ship over, but she wants a word with you about them. Now.”

“On my way.” Paul replied, before tapping out of the connection and sighing. “I wonder why Tilly is contacting him about having a word rather than me.”

Hugh snorted as he refused to step back and let Paul move. “She will have made some comment about talking to you and Lorca’s a control freak who doesn’t like you talking to another Captain behind his back.” Paul’s curiosity rippled along their bond at that, as though the man had never considered how selfish Lorca was before.

“I’m not actually assigned to the Buran anymore; Tilly’s more my captain than he is. Plus he has no knowledge of the mycelial network and even less of the hybrids. He’s not going to be of any use in our conversations.” Paul rolled his eyes as Hugh grinned and leaned in to kiss the side of his mouth before finally stepping back. 

“Less than no knowledge?” He asked with a slight chuckle as Paul began to pull the outer parts of his uniform back on. 

The scientist nodded as he zipped his jacket up. “Exactly. It would be better if he knew nothing but instead he thinks he knows what we are doing and tries asking questions and interfering.” Paul was outright complaining; but Hugh could still feel the low thrum of arousal through their bond that mirrored his own. It was good to know Hugh wasn’t the only one disappointed about stopping.

“If you punch Lorca, I’ll patch you up when you get back.” He said as he stepped in to help Paul fasten his armour.

“Thanks.” He deadpanned in response, but Hugh just smirked at him. If Paul punched Lorca, Hugh wouldn’t blame him, but he also didn’t think that his partner would be able to do so without the older man fighting back. Besides which, Paul rather liked Lorca, for reasons Hugh didn’t really understand.

With that thought darkening his mood, the doctor scowled. “Why did he have to interrupt our evening?” He grouched softly as his eyes skimmed Paul’s form; he did look good in uniform.

The scientist chuckled as he leaned in for a final kiss. “Wouldn’t do to be sentimental about our time together.” Then he turned and headed out.

Hugh sighed and began to clear up their dishes. It was twelve years to the day since he had grabbed Paul’s arm in that old café on Alpha Centuri and established their surface bond; nearly seven years since his soul mate had accidently killed Straal and been brought aboard the Buran to work on the Emperor’s flagship; about three years since that ship had set sail, when Paul had had to start spending every other month there and more than half a year since Tilly had taken over the Discovery and set up a garden to help develop new hybrids with Paul. His partner had received a transfer over to the Discovery about a month after the red-head had taken over and now he only spent two weeks in every eight on the Buran. It was more of a toll than Hugh had expected, no longer having someone there at the end of his shift to confide in; there was no one he could talk to without waving the double weakness of no Paul and too many emotions in their face.

Just thinking about it had him glancing over at the box where he had his tablets stored. He’d tried a variety of different combinations over the years finding what information he could going back to nearly the start of the digital age, he even hunted out computerised copies of older studies, written on physical paper before being transferred to a hardier platform. He’d tried citalopram, levomilnacipram, trazodone and other documented drugs to the more addictive ones like cocaine, GHB and Ecstasy; none of them had worked as well as he’d needed while doing the horrific work he had to do, and a fair few had taken creative solutions to hide the effects as he recovered from his experiments. It was a shame he couldn’t admit what he was doing to anyone else, because he would have liked some human test subjects to work with on this.

Hugh had eventually settled on a drug they’d found in some village out past Vulcan; it was made from mushroom roots and the effects only lasted a few hours, but it numbed him while he worked without impairing his ability to think. Paul both loved and hated it because, of course, they were mushrooms and Hugh’s emotions were functioning properly when they were together off shift, but he hated how it muted their bond; his partner could tell he was there, but it was as though there was a membrane surrounding his core that Paul simply couldn’t push through. Hugh could always feel Paul along their bond and he never felt the need to go exploring his partner’s emotions while he was working anyway, so he didn’t really see the problem.

The doctor had other issues to muse unhappily on, especially in relation to his captain.

Hugh’s first real issue with Lorca was the way he treated Paul; on more than one occasion, he had overheard the man complaining about the slow progress the scientist was making and how his whinging was going to make the situation with the Emperor worse. He’d made comments about Paul’s obsession with growing hybrids despite the fact that the scientist had killed more than fifty people over a disagreement last time he’d been given that kind of a weapon. 

The second was that he was still making Hugh develop drugs to torture and interrogate the alien rebels. Despite the solutions Hugh had developed for his own mental stability, losing Paul to the Discovery had impacted negatively with his ability to cope with his own work.

Thankfully however, there had been a lull in their hunting as Lorca was more interested in the potential of the mycelial power cores and whether or not they could be weaponised. It meant that Lorca spent a lot of time as near to the Discovery as he could get away with during the three weeks in every eight that Paul spent over there. 

As soon as Paul had transferred and Hugh had realised that the Buran and Discovery were still beside each other, he’s send Paul a message; his infuriating partner had taken Hugh’s datacard with his prohibited novels on and not told him. However, Lorca must have thought Hugh had called for some sentimental reason as he’d made comments that pointed out he had leverage over the doctor next time they had come across one another in the Medbay; fortunately the tides turned for him when, during the next cycle, Hugh had noticed that they were still spending time alongside the Discovery without permission from the Emperor. He’d pointed out to his Captain that if Lorca was supposed to be working with Paul on this project he had in mind, then Paul wouldn’t have been transferred over to another ship to work with Tilly while Lorca attempted to bully him into working on weapons; he’d then wondered aloud if the Emperor was aware that they were wasting time. Not that Hugh would ever dare contact their ruler, but Lorca didn’t know him well enough to realise that.

With blackmail in place, Hugh was now only out of contact with his soulmate for three weeks in every eight, when he was aboard the Charon; not that he dared discuss work or sensitive issues over the coms, so he couldn’t vent his frustrations to his partner, but it was nice to hear the man’s voice during that time. Unfortunately, Hugh’s own displeasure with Lorca hadn’t change the fact that Paul had been won over by him. Instead of scowling and rebuffing Lorca’s attempts to develop yet more weapons, the scientist was trying to develop micro-cores for the man; Lorca had found Paul’s own desire to cultivate his own fungi and had started preying on it. Hugh wasn’t exactly sure what they talked about and how he’d gotten Paul on his side because when they were both in their quarters, they very rarely discussed other people, and when they did then it tended to be their own families who got a mention rather than their colleagues. Hugh made a determined effort to keep work outside their cabin and his partner did his best to stick to it, his only failing in that was his mind worked best when relaxed so he often ended up on his PADD to jot down some new idea that had developed. 

However, Paul was indeed on Lorca’s side, often making comments about how the Emperor could have been doing certain things better that Hugh knew had originated with the captain. At least the man knew better than to mention Lorca when they were spending time together, and while the doctor knew his soulmate wanted to discuss what Lorca had said with him, he was aware of Hugh’s unspoken refusal to do so and never tried. 

The man sighed before deciding to take a shower. There were some new articles he could catch up on once he was warm and comfortable.

\------

“How’s your extra project coming along?” Lorca asked conversationally as Paul crouched beside the crates.

Paul frowned as he looked at the scanner. “Well, I’ve narrowed down the region a little better.” He replied vaguely. 

“That’s it?” There was an undercurrent of frustration in Lorca’s voice, even though his body language hadn’t changed from its relaxed expression. 

“I told you before, Captain. I can’t exactly follow her every step. The Charon might be called a city ship but it is still a ship and the corridors are enclosed; I can’t follow her without being seen.” Lorca wanted to know where exactly the Emperor was housed on the Charon, but a detailed map wasn’t available to anyone. Each person living there only had access to the information that they needed, for example most people wouldn’t know where the mushroom crops were grown; they would be unable to bring the information up on a monitor and the doors to the farms wouldn’t open for them. However Paul and the farmers that he had been given could get the computer to give them directions to the right section for their work, but they didn’t have access to other information, such as where the soldiers were housed.

“Then get creative.” The man finally snapped, as he often did if Paul answered back with anything but acceptance. “Use the access tunnels, set one of those bots you have to keep track of her, do something!”

“It’s not that easy.” The scientist explained through clenched teeth. “Once I’m in the access tubes, I can’t see the corridors. They are for repair work and reaching bits of the ship where the main corridor is too damaged to use, not for spying. And she has guards with her at all times; I can’t build a bot small enough to go unnoticed by them.” He stopped abruptly before starting in on his next set of complaints, not wanting to test Lorca’s patience more than he already was.

"Specialist Stamets." 

“I…” He hesitated, shifting nervously over to look at the sealed containers of spores. He’d just returned from the city-ship and should have expected Lorca’s questioning, but he’d been expected to have a conversation with Tilly; he hadn’t had a chance to relax with Hugh and mentally prepare himself for this captain.

“Well, spit it out, son.” Lorca drawled, but his easy tone was belied by the sharp focus in his eyes. “I’m not going to go telling tales on you.”

“Is this…” He paused again, not wanting to piss Lorca off. “I just, couldn’t you just tell the Emperor your concerns rather than trying to kill her?”

Lorca chuckled darkly, his face keeping its friendly expression even as his gaze hardened. “And how exactly do you see that working? I just hand her a PADD with my complaints on it? Maybe I should arrange a meeting to rattle all of them off? Or should I go for sending it in a private message where I can be at a safer distance but there is a chance the line could be hacked.”

“It’s just that the outer borders really are her only major failing.” He said hesitantly, standing up to move further away from Lorca as he began to log the data on his PADD. “Doctor Culber and I would have to wait a little longer to get off ship but you would still have the freedom that comes with being a captain rather than an Emperor and if you devise a solution to the borders problem then actually pointing the problem out to her won’t be so risky.” Hugh had told Paul many years ago to have a solution to an issue ready for when you informed your superiors of the problem. 

“And watch it go down as her victory? Do you really think she deserves to be remembered more than I do?” Paul shrunk back as Lorca snarled at him, his own personal doubts about the ambitious captain becoming too pronounced to ignore. 

“Sorry, sir.” He said, hoping to hide the realisation that he couldn’t fully support Lorca by turning around to tap at a wall panel. 

“Do you know who my soulmate is, Specialist?” The Captain asked, his tone dangerously idle. 

“Sir?” Paul asked, uncertain about this line of conversation but unwilling to voice rumours as he turned back around to face the larger man.

Lorca turned to pick up one of the spore containers, running his hand over the smooth casing as he spoke. “It’s Michael Burnham; the Emperor’s daughter.” He waited for a moment there, as though expecting Paul to say something. When he didn’t, the older man continued. “I want you to understand that I’m not trying to usurp the Emperor for my own gain. You’ll know that when I kill her mother, I’ll share in Michael’s pain. It’s not something I do lightly.”

“I know.” Paul replied softly, aware that he could shield himself from Hugh’s emotions and vice versa, but maybe Lorca considered it cowardly to shield himself from the pain he would cause.

“I do this because the Emperor won’t see reason. You tell her there is a problem with such a large power core and she only puts in the minimum effort required to let you sort it, she doesn’t even let you concentrate fully on growing the new hybrids on this ship as well as the Discovery.”

“I do now have a lab for growing my prototaxites stellaviatori crop on the Charon too.” Paul felt the need to point out. He had sent enough messages to get someone to listen to him, so the prototaxites stellaviatori crop wasn’t all dry-stored in a separate bay; he’d finally been given cultivation bays to farm his own. It was true that he would have liked a chance to grow hybrids on the Charon as well, but it was a start. He’d never actually asked about growing hybrids on the Buran; Lorca’s need to interfere meant that he wasn’t comfortable leaving experiments to run without him for six weeks out of eight.

“Exactly. But I know that you long for a place away from all the dangers of space travel.” Lorca’s voice was soft as he referred to old conversations when Paul had let his insecurities slip. “The Emperor doesn’t care enough to go searching for what it is that can make you happy. But I have.” He paused, but Paul waited instead of speaking up. “Sharing our soul with another person makes us vulnerable in a way, wouldn’t you say?”

The scientist glanced down at his PADD, unsure where Lorca was going with this but immensely uncomfortable none the less. “Yes sir.”

“Some people are overwhelmed by it, lose all common sense.” The captain’s shrewd gaze struck him. “They feel an unTerran desire to share every part of their life, to eliminate secrets from their partner; they believe they can trust everything to one person because they think using that primal part of their brain from a time when humanity was closer to its animal ancestors than the advanced species that they are now.”

Paul suddenly realised what Lorca was getting at. “I haven’t told Doctor Culber anything about our plans.”

Lorca didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His eyes were piercing and Paul shuddered at the attention, but he didn’t back down.

“I’ve thought about it.” He admitted, looking down at his PADD again. “More than once, but I haven’t. I don’t want to say we are going to be able to settle down somewhere when it isn’t guaranteed.” He didn’t want to build something up only to have come crashing down in disappointment. 

“Best wait till I am Emperor and can give you what you want as a reward.”

“Yes sir.”

“Get this finished. The sooner those weapons are developed, the sooner we can make a move.” The man turned and headed out, leaving Paul behind in silence. 

He sighed and began to log the containers, moving them over to where they’d be stored. Tilly’s call hadn’t even been mentioned, but he wondered if that had simply been a ploy to make Paul move faster; an annoying idea as it had worked, especially as Tilly contacted him without a middle-man if they needed to talk.

Still, if he got this finished quickly then maybe he’d be able to salvage his evening with Hugh.

\------

“I’m applying for a transfer.” Hugh said once Paul had sat down. It was the evening before his partner left for the Discovery and Hugh had finally sent the datawork off.

The scientist’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “What?”

Hugh took another deep breath, trying to keep himself calm. “I can’t do this anymore.” But those words sent a horrified jolt down their bond and Hugh realised he’d phrased that wrong. “I mean Lorca.” He shifted close to grasp Paul’s hands. “I can’t be around Lorca anymore. Not you. I need you.”

But his partner was shaking his head. “I’m not leaving.” He pulled his hands away to fold his arms tightly over his chest. “Lorca has plans and he said he’ll let me grow my own mushrooms when…” He trailed off, but Hugh could almost hear the unspoken words.

When he overthrows the Emperor…

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” He hissed, clenching his fists to stop himself reaching for the tablets that helped him detach; over the past seven years, he’d discovered a worrying dependency on the medication he took. He’d never been able to decide whether or not he took too much or too little; sometimes, he could cope with life’s imperfections and how proficient he’d become in helping Captain Lorca interrogate and torture people, other times he hated the sight of the little tablets, and how pathetically weak they made him feel. 

He could fully acknowledge that having Paul on board the ship with him was all that kept him going some days despite the fact that his partner had no idea how to calm him down, other than sex, or that Paul often said entirely the wrong thing when he was trying to help, when he was physically present to say anything at all; the scientist had started consulting with the newly promoted Captain Tilly of the ISS Discovery back when she’d been an Ensign and genuinely curious in his earlier work on hybrids he had once made. Apparently the Emperor trusted Tilly more than Paul to safely grow stuff, because she had been allowed to grow the crop that Paul was half desperate for; the older scientist was only allowed over to see it on his consulting visits. Unfortunately, these consultations were three weeks long, then the scientist spent the next three weeks on the Charon working with the power core which meant he was only on the Buran for two weeks in two months; it wasn’t enough.

But with Paul elsewhere so often, Hugh really didn’t know why he was still here. He reached out and took his partner’s hand, cutting off the discussion of Lorca’s plans before it completely derailed the conversation he wanted to have.

“I’ve sent out two requests. One to the Charon and one to the Discovery.”

Paul’s irritated look vanished as his jaw nearly dropped again. “You… to my other ships?”

“If one of them will have me.” He confirmed. “And then if you aren’t coming back here, you’ll get those two weeks over there and we may get to spend even more time together.”

“A month on each. Every other month with you.” Paul murmured, and Hugh could feel a ripple of fear work through him.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, genuinely confused about what might be frightening.

“What if it doesn’t happen?” Paul shifted closer to him on the couch, tangling their legs together as he leaned his weight on Hugh. “I’ve been working on a solution to your work for Lorca but this didn’t even occur to me. It seems too easy.”

Hugh couldn’t help the smile that formed on his face as he pressed his lips into the scientist’s hair; the notion that Paul had been working to chance their circumstances to make Hugh happy was terribly sweet, but the man did have his moments. 

“We’ll just have to wait and see.” He replied, shifting back to let the man rest more of his weight on him; it always was a comforting pressure.

“Do you know how long it’ll take to get a response?” Paul asked as he relaxed, dropping his head onto Hugh’s chest as he settled.

“When Donovan got a transfer, it took him nearly five weeks to hear back, but Kelly got a reply within four days.” He answered with a slight shrug. “So I really don’t know.”

“I’ll pack more of my stuff than normal then tomorrow.” Paul decided, making Hugh grin at the rare display of optimism.

“If I get to leave, I’ll bring everything with me.” He assured him, grabbing his PADD off the table to read some recently uploaded articles as Paul dozed off.

\------

Paul suppressed a whimper as he was dragged out of bed, his whole body still ached and any movement sent a flare of painful heat through his nerves. Still, he mused in an attempt to distract himself from it, at least he had bothered to dress in clean clothing when he’d fallen into bed; a black short-sleeved top; dark comfy trousers; a cuff around his wrist… but they didn’t pause to let him get socks, shoes or a jacket. He was hauled through the corridors of the ISS Charon without rest; it took nearly half an hour to reach their destination, the city size ship was not quick to navigate, even with modern technology unless you had clearance to use a transporter, but not many people did. 

Over the last few days Paul had spent nearly all his time in an agoniser booth; he’d had one break for food, which had been vomited back up anyway and it had only stopped when he’d passed out. Throughout the torture, he’d felt Hugh’s distress and he knew his partner had been watching. The possible reasons why Hugh was being forced to watch his soulmate in agony hadn’t distracted him for long as he didn’t really know the people Hugh worked with on the Charon. 

The doctor had gotten his transfer approved before Paul had even finished his first week over there and they’d been roomed together; he wasn’t exactly complaining about it, but Paul did wonder who had decided on this, especially as the Buran had indeed been taken out of his own shift rotations. He rather imagined Lorca was furious as there was no easy way for Paul to pass him information, but the scientist’s urgency to change things about had disappeared now that Hugh was back to working as a regular doctor. 

On the way people were turning their heads away from his face, and Paul finally dipped his mental shields enough to register Hugh’s fear. Had his partner realised that Paul was returning to the agonisers? Had he simply returned to their room to find his partner missing? Was the pain he’d undergone recently nothing to do with Hugh at all, but some kind of issue the Emperor had with Paul himself? Or was this how she sought amusement? He really wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss her off so much, his work with the power core had slowed, but it was necessary as he moved between the Charon and the Discovery. That work had to take a backseat as he focussed on the hybrids that he’d started growing on Tilly’s ship nearly eight months ago, but it’d boost the work on the power core once they were growing and producing the spores he needed.

However, he wasn’t led into the torture chambers, but to the observation rooms above them. When his escorts let go of his arms he dropped to the floor, legs still too weak to support his weight; a pair of boots stepped smartly into his line of vision, the slight chuckle he could hear above him in response to his pain and weakness sent a chill through him.

“Specialist Stamets.” The Emperor’s purring voice sent a shudder through the man, and he raised his head enough to look up at her. “I have some questions about your Captain that I think you will be able to answer.”

"About Tilly?" He wondered, moving slowly as he pushed himself up to sit against the wall. At the shake of her head, he frowned. “Lorca? I thought he was your advisor?”

Her cruel smile made the scientist flinch as she stepped back and raised her brow at the guard; Paul was hauled to his feet again and held up before her. “I have questions.” She reminded him. “And you have answers.”

“Yes sir.” He replied, eager to avoid any more pain, even as he secured his own mental shields; he’d likely put Hugh through enough pain over the past few days without continuing to add to it. He was strong enough at the moment to hold his shields in place so that his partner couldn’t feel the agony he was anticipating.

“So, tell me about your captain.” Her voice still a soft, threatening purr. “I’ve been hearing that he isn’t happy with me.” She stepped up behind him and Paul flinched away, utterly unnerved by the whole situation.

“I- I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t actually like me.” He explained, trying not to look curiously at her. Last time he’d been in a room with both of them had been seven years earlier when he’d been posted to the ISS Buran; the two had seemed to get along well enough back then. 

"He has a plan. You know what it is." she stated flatly as Paul shrank away from her, putting enough energy into the movement that the guards dropped him to the floor; apparently they hadn’t expected him to move himself at all.

“I’m sorry.” He said, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

She nodded her head at someone and Paul was pulled to his feet and pressed against the observation window in time to see Hugh shoved into a booth.

“I’ll give you some time to think on it.” She told him in a cold voice but Paul didn’t turn away from his soulmate. 

Hours later, Paul was on the floor by the window, his mental shields frayed by Hugh’s agony and his own stress. He could have lessened his partner’s pain by dropping his own shields and letting Hugh into his mind, giving him somewhere to hide that the agonisers didn’t physically reach, but the scientist had his barriers firmly in place. He hated that he was so afraid of more pain, but he couldn’t bring himself to open their link up.

“Do you have answers yet?” the Emperor had returned, and Paul was half carried over to hang before her, unable to get his feet underneath him. Her lip curled as she looked him up and down, from the scruffy state where he’d been twisting his clothes in between his hands to his tear-stained face.

“He asked me to find where your sleeping quarters were.” He admitted to her, his whole body trembling as he spoke. “I told him that I can’t and he told me to try and I still can’t. I can’t. I tried and I can’t do it.”

“What else?” she asked, ignoring the rambling as Paul’s mind tried to unravel. 

He flitted through the different conversations he’d had with Lorca, unaware of his own mumblings as he tried to think of something useful. “Michael Burnham.” He settled on, hoping this would be enough to free Hugh. “She’s his soulmate and he doesn’t care if she gets hurt when he takes you down.”

“And how is he going to take me down?” she hissed, the fury in her voice making Paul flinch, but the guards holding him didn’t let him move back. Paul had never mentioned Burnham to her, but he wondered if she was a sore spot; he was simply too tired, too pained to work out the implications of what he was seeing.

“People. By people. He’s got people over here. Lots of them, I think.” He yelped, trembling harder as she took a step closer.

“You’re the only one who went to his ship from here.”

“Not me!” he insisted, eyes wide as he hurried to save himself and Hugh. “He got someone to mess with the coms and now he can open a channel without you knowing. But I don’t even know where the coms maintenance section is! It’s not me.”

“He thinks he can talk without me knowing.” She smiled and stepped back. “Thank you, Specialist Stamets. These fine men are going to take you back to your cabin.”

“And Hugh. Culber, I mean. Doctor Culber.” He didn’t want Hugh to be forgotten about in an agoniser booth. “Hugh needs to come back too.”

“And Doctor Culber.” She repeated in a patronising tone, but Paul was dragged out before he could think of anything else to say.

\------

Hugh settled in bed, his body still taxed by his own time spent in the agoniser booth compounded with watching Paul scream and sob with pain for days. It had been nearly a week since the whole ordeal and the quiet of their cabin was almost unnerving; the doctor could still hear his soulmate’s cried in the silence.

“Lorca’s gone.” Paul said softly a few moments after he’d clambered into his own side and settled with his back to his partner, his voice oddly blank but Hugh could feel the disappointment slowly dripping into him. “He escaped the destruction of the Buran in a shuttle but got lost in an ion storm.”

“I though the details were classified.” The doctor replied, his own voice gentle as he digested the information.

“I asked Tilly.” Paul shrugged slightly, but he didn’t turn over. Hugh honestly felt lonely on his own side of their bed; his partner hadn’t cuddled up with him since they had been tortured.

“I’m sorry. I know you liked him… Wanted him to be the Emperor.” He was whispering, uncomfortable even mentioning such things, despite the fact that they checked their room for bugs every night; they’d had to destroy three just in the handful of weeks they’d both been here alone so they didn’t take the risk of missing a night now.

“No and yes.” The scientist sighed and finally turned over, his gaze vulnerable even as he huddled into himself so far away. “He could be likeable and when he wanted something he blatantly turned the charm on, but he’s not like you, he isn’t naturally charming… wasn’t, I mean. Maybe it was only noticeable because you’re so genuine but his attitude was really fake.”

Paul gave Hugh a slight smile, but the frown stopped the expression spreading far. Still, it warmed Hugh to see it and he smiled kindly back at him. “Well, that’s a little embarrassing; I thought you were actually taken in by him.”

But his soulmate was already shaking his head. “He made promises and those I think were genuine.”

“What promises?” he asked as he rolled onto his belly, closer to the middle of their bed. He was still smiling, though he hoped Paul wouldn’t think it a strange expression; he was simply relieved as there had been an uncomfortable silence in their bed ever since their torture.

“He was going to get me off the ship and give me a proper science base on a small planet.” Paul explained in a wistful tone. “A chance to do a wider variety of work in safer conditions with proper assistants and space without a superior hovering over my shoulder to demand results.”

“That sounds nice.” Hugh answered without feeling; he didn’t like being separated from his partner but at least in their current arrangement they got to spend some time together on a regular basis. Paul’s plan sounded like their arrangement back when Straal had been alive and Hugh had only been able to visit when he had leave; it made him glad that Lorca had been taken out before that could happen.

“You would have been there too.” Paul was rolling his eyes, they’d known each other long enough that even with their mental shields up, he had no trouble interpreting Hugh’s tone. “You would have been heading a research team in the base and sending the information to others so they could do the interrogations for you. He was going to let you have human test subjects to figure out the refinements for your emotion drugs on.”

“You… really?” He felt oddly choked up at the idea. 

Paul shuffled only a tiny bit closer, but enough for Hugh to feel the warmth from him. “You don’t like it and I figured we could reach a compromise that would benefit all three of us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hugh wanted to reach out, but he didn’t want to break the fragile moment by moving too soon.

“I promised not to.” The scientist replied before wiggling closer and pressing lightly against Hugh’s arm. For the first time in far too long, Paul suddenly dropped all his barriers and opened himself to their bond.

“I missed you.” Hugh said as his thoughts were flooded with Paul’s pain and loneliness; he reached out to pull the man against his chest.

“I feel like an idiot for not thinking of you transferring.” He whispered into the dark and Hugh held him tighter.

“It wasn’t a matter of just transferring. Those who can’t pay the full price for the academy have to do a certain number of years on assignment before they can request a posting. I only finished mine at the start of the year.”

“Oh.” Paul turned over to press his back to Hugh’s chest, and the doctor allowed his arms to be pulled into an embrace. “I forgot about that too.”

They did fine for talking about the important things, but old finances had never really cropped up. “It honestly doesn’t matter now.” He said with a sigh, finally relaxing with the soulmate so close. “I’m happy where I am and Lorca is long gone.”

As Paul dozed off, Hugh lay awake for a little bit longer. They’d both been through a lot recently, and he was honestly surprised that their relationship had survived it; he’d seen other people’s fall apart with less shit. 

However, they would both have to knuckle down and work hard to prove themselves; they’d both given the Emperor a clear view of their vulnerabilities and she could easily destroy them. He pressed his face into Paul’s neck, trying not to grasp him too hard as he recalled his partner’s agony, the way he’d bitten through his lip, how he’d thrown up more than once and eventually had hit the ground, barely even twitching… 

He could remember the fear that had struck him motionless, staring at the man he’d been unable to help. He’d begged the Emperor to stop, he’d pleaded and shouted and threatened and sobbed… eventually, she’d believed that he knew nothing of Lorca’s planned coup but then he’d been left in a dark room for hours before he was dragged to an agony booth himself.

He was genuinely pleased that Paul had been unable to last very long while watching Hugh cry out in pain, even with a clear picture of what their future could be in his mind. He kissed Paul’s neck and tried to settle down, but it took several hours with his soulmate’s wonderful weight in his arms before he managed to sleep.

\------

“Okay. Send this then actually get work done.” Paul murmured, eyes heavy as he tried to bring the hazy lines on the screen in front of him into focus. He tapped to record a message. “Hey Tilly. I think I’ve found a safer way of doing this. Comparing the results of my work with the dry spores to the fungi that you’re growing, it seems as though accessing the network with fresh spores is the way to do this. The network seems to heal itself quicker from your connections than from mine. I think it’s something in the mushroom itself but I won’t know for sure until I convince the Emperor to let me use some space and resources in growing hybrids of my own over here.” Despite his exhaustion, the idea sent a thrill through him; he’d wanted to grow his own from the start. “Once I repeat the experiments with fresh spores here then I can eliminate the core as another variant.” He wanted to be sure that the open connection to the network from the power core wasn’t affecting the results as opposed to how recently the spores were harvested. 

He sighed and looked at his charts again; he honestly would have preferred to be aboard the ISS Discovery, where Tilly had still found excuses to come down and visit him, even after she had fought her way to the top. As hard as it was to spend so much time away from Hugh, his transfer over there really was a good thing; for four weeks he got to focus on growing his own crops and working on stabilising a small power core while using the less reliable spores. Growing hybrids was something he had done years ago, but that work had been stopped as they thought he’d deliberately killed his oldest friend for something as petty as stealing his work. This foray back into hybrids was fair recent, as he was only about ten months in but he was enjoying it. Lorca had been gone for nearly two months now, and he was glad the man was dead; it meant he didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder as it was sort of his fault the coup had failed. 

“Okay.” He murmured, pulling his gaze away from the monitor as he stepped away to get another container of spores. These ones tended to be unstable when used for the smaller power cores, but they produced more power with less damage to the network. If he could just work out a way to stabilise the connection then he could use them instead of having the bulk of the spores from prototaxites stellaviatori, which would hopefully allow the corruption in the network to heal. 

Corruption… he’d joked before about making the network sick, but he was pretty sure that he’d actually fucked up that much and the network did have some kind of infection. 

He’d had the room next to his lab on the Charon changed into a kind of spore chamber while he’d been on Tilly’s ship, with an observation window joining the two. He had plans to leave experiments running while he was elsewhere so that he could check how things ran by themselves; however this depended on none of his assistants getting curious and messing with it in an attempt to understand. 

He glowered at the com panel for a long moment, wishing he had better orders. Why the fuck had he mentioned the problems to the Emperor before he’d found a solution? Hugh had always told him to have the next steps in the plan ready when he was giving bad news, and he wasn’t that far on in his plan of what to do. This experiment really was still an experiment; it had worked on the Discovery, but with diminishing returns, as though the connecting to the mycelial network with these hybrid-spores couldn’t be done in rapid succession without giving the network time to heal.

He had no idea what was going to happen when using them so close to the main power source for the palace-ship. It was hard to say if doing this more slowly would help or not; he’d triple-checked his calculations, but with unstable samples, somethings couldn’t actually be calculated ahead of time.

Paul shook his head to try and clear it; he couldn’t waste any more time thinking about this. He just needed to get it done. He inserted the container smoothly into the housing, feeling it slide easily and noiselessly in as he focussed on his breathing: in for two, hold for four, out for four, repeat… The lights on the chamber shifted to blue and he turned back to his monitor.

This was such a bad idea. There was a high risk of something going wrong when these spores were exposed to such high power levels. He should have sent Hugh a message, just in case something happened. He had a gift for Hugh hidden away in his own junk drawer in their cabin. At least he had his will in place to split his money and possessions between his partner, Hugh and his brother, Mark. Thoughts were firing disjointedly through his mind at rapid speed as he sent the spores into the lab, his eyes flitting from his monitor to the observation window and back again as they were expelled through the vent and he forced a connection.

An alarm beeped at him but as he glanced back at his display, there was a brief noise behind him and he watched almost in slow motion as the wall approached quickly. Those spores had definitely been unstable. He should have said goodbye to Hugh.

\------

“This wouldn’t be a problem if you had come earlier.” Hugh scolded as he placed the tricorder on the tray and picked up his PADD.

“But you will be able to fix it, right?” The Operations Ensign asked, her blue eyes wide in poorly disguised fear, her hand clenched into fists as she gazed at her leg.

Hugh sighed. “It’s going to be a fairly major operation so you’ll need to pay for it. Starfleet covers for minor healthcare unless it’s going to affect your job.” He explained as he updated her files. “You don’t need your knee to bend properly to work.”

“I need my knee! I won’t be as effective in my job if I need to keep my leg straight.” She yelped, sitting up to look imploringly at the doctor. “I got the other one done without this problem.”

“It wasn’t as bad as this one… and you filed a complaint about scarring.” He noted as he scanned through her file. The scar was on her head, hidden by her hair; anaesthetic cost money to use so Starfleet allowed medical staff to knock people unconscious where possible for operations. It didn’t often leave scars though. A sharp pain suddenly lanced through the fog that his medication caused, but Hugh forced himself to stay where he was as the woman before him glared.

“With good reason! I thought nurses were supposed to be professionals when knocking people out.” She half growled, her anger apparently wiping out her fear.

“Well, you filed a complaint so Starfleet doesn’t want to bother with you again.” He replied unsympathetically, trying to not be annoyed with her attitude towards his colleagues as worry trickled into his consciousness; had that pain been Paul? “And you should have made the choice between a painful knee and the chance of another scar before this got as bad as it is.”

As she continued to object, Doctor Harris headed over to the bio-bed they were at. “Doctor Culber? A word?”

Hugh nodded and stepped back, putting his head close to the other man; out of all the staff here, Harris was the one he trusted the most. It possibly didn’t mean too much, but Harris worked along a different medical track and wasn’t going to try and off him for a promotion.

“There’s been an explosion in the Specialist labs.” He said softly so no one would overhear. “McKay wants you to go as you know the way there better than the rest of us.”

“Any- Any casualties?” He asked nervously as he left the ensign behind to get a medkit. 

“Hazard Engineers are just going in. The computers in there are fried, so it’s not clear if anyone was or still is in there.”

“On my way.” He said, hurrying out of the Medbay. Several corridors later, there was no one about so he ran towards the elevator, his heart already pounding as he wondered about Paul. His fear seemed to be blowing the drug-induced haze away and his mind was closing in on one thing: he had to get to his soulmate.

Once out the lift, Hugh raced through the corridors to the scientist’s lab, his heart pounding with a terror that wouldn’t abate. Skidding to a halt, he barely managed to keep his face straight as he watched the hazard engineers moving out.

“Doctor Culber.” Lieutenant Harper stepped forwards, his blank face giving nothing away.

Hugh tried to relax as he looked at the man’s mucky uniform. “What happened?” His voice was sharp, the note of fear thankfully coming out as anger.

“Sir. There was an explosion in the Specialist’s lab. It originated in the adjoining room but the window was fused with silica which likely saved Stamets’ life.” The man shifted his body trembling slightly as he visibly suppressed a cough. “Most of the stuff in the separate lab was incinerated and even the walls are warped slightly by the explosion.” He gestured behind him and Hugh noticed for the first time the walls outside the next room along which were visibly convexed. 

“And in the main part of his lab?” Hugh asked, managing to sound curious without his voice wavering. 

“Stamets is unconscious, but he is alive.” Harper repeated, not seeming to notice how much Hugh appreciated those words. “His lab is going to take some time to repair and I’m going to get a team to look over the venting later on as it looks as though that had been open, but I’ve got to go make a full report to Peterson.”

Hugh nodded his head. “You can leave.” 

Harper handed over a flashlight as he stepped around him. “We’ve taken most the heat out the room so it’s safe to go in now, but I wouldn’t advise touching more than you have to. Some of it will still give you burns.” And with that the man hurried away to report to the Emperor’s Engineering Advisor.

Throat dry and heart hammering painfully in his chest, the doctor stepped slowly over to the room and shone the light inside. The smell was almost over-powering and he coughed for a moment before stepping in anyway.

Some of the lights were flickering weakly but most of them were out; none of the displays that usually ran in Paul’s lab were working, but Hugh didn’t focus on them. He looked through the wall to the blackened shell of the experiment chamber before moving the light away; just looking at the damage made his stomach churn.

On the floor by the back wall, Hugh spotted his partner. “Paul!” he hissed through the lump that had formed in his throat as he forced his frozen limbs to move him closer. “Emergency medical transport. Two from Specialist Science Lab A to Medbay.” He instructed the computer, not daring to touch his partner.

In the harsh lighting of the medbay, it honestly looked worse. Doctor Philips jumped up from where he’d been staring blankly at a wall to set the large scanner going as Hugh moved to prepare several hypos.

“Third degree burns from his lower back upwards.” The man said as he took the hypos from Hugh to administer them into his leg; not the proper locations for them, but Paul’s neck was too damage for them. “Fourth degree burns to his left shoulder, if you collect some dermaplastic graft sheets then we might be able to repair this. Right arm is broken in two places and so is his nose.”

Hugh hurried to the storage to prepare the graft sheets, only daring to look back over his shoulder at the ragged form of his partner because he was having to let Philips treat him. In the dark, quiet room, Hugh paused for a moment, pressing his hands to his face as he tried to let go of his fear… It was incredibly disturbing that he couldn’t feel Paul’s emotions through their bond; even when he was asleep, Paul tended to share what he was feeling with the doctor; his usual tablets meant he didn’t notice Paul when he was working, but that had worn off already. He wondered if this is what Paul felt when he took his drugs? He could tell his partner was still alive but not much else. This absence made him feel isolated, so he made himself continue, driving the loneliness from his mind as he grabbed the materials and hurried back out. 

Philips had taken Paul into a separate room and, along with Nurse Hewitt, had stripped him to his underwear. Hugh’s stomach jolted painfully as he saw the white bone of Paul’s shoulder and he averted his gaze, heading over to put the sheets down and grab a regenerator; he was only going to get in the way if he worked higher up, so he started at his partner’s waist line and began to heal the lesser, but still severe, damage.

Paul was going to be fine though. He had to be.

\------

Hugh opened his bleary eyes as the com pulled him from his uneasy sleep. 

“Computer, caller ID?” he asked as he staggered out of bed to drop into his desk chair. 

“ _Doctor Henry Jameson, Earth, Imperial Starfleet Main Hospital in San Francisco, Neurology Department_.”

“This is Doctor Hugh Culber.” Hugh answered as he tapped the com panel to allow the connection. 

“This is Doctor Henry Jameson.” The voice on the other end spoke in a European accent, though Hugh’s knowledge of accents meant that he couldn’t narrow it down more than that. “I have the files you sent through.”

“Have you been able to reach any conclusions?” Hugh asked, tensing up as he waited for an answer.

The man hummed softly. “I have a few questions, if I may.”

“Go ahead.”

“Specialist Stamets is still unconscious?” The man asked, his voice only mildly curious.

Hugh fought to keep his own voice steady. “He is. He’s in a coma, but he’s starting to deteriorate.” 

“Hence your more determined efforts to get answers.” Jameson said, his voice strangely non-judgemental. “I need you to send me more brain scans. As detailed as you can get on that ship.”

“You’ll look into it then?” Hugh asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

“Oh yes.” The man sounded pleased. “I do enjoy a challenge.” 

“Excellent. I have several more scans I’ll send you now.” Hugh uploaded the most recent data and sent it over. “His body is healing so I’m not sure why his mind is suffering.”

“That is why you’re talking to a neurologist.” Jameson replied dismissively. 

Hugh bit back a sigh; he’d considered studying neurology, but gone for bio-med technology instead, and then in more recent years he’d been studying pharmacology in relation to xenobiology thanks to Lorca; he just hadn’t had the time to focus on the human brain. 

“I see here that Specialist Stamets has a twin.” Jameson’s voice was once again inquisitive, and if this had been anyone else then Hugh wouldn’t have minded, but now he had to fight the urge to snarl at the neurologist. 

“He does and they are a bone marrow match but they’ve lived very different lives. I don’t know how closely you can compare their brains.” Mark had developed a xeno blood disease similar to aplastic anaemia and had needed a transplant, but that had been nearly nine years ago. The other doctor must have been reading through Paul’s medical history.

“Bone marrow, yes.” The man murmured and Hugh could hear tapping in the background. “If you can get a sample from the Specialist and I shall obtain a sample from the twin. This could link to personal research that I’ve been working on. Hmm…”

“Mark will never agree to that. He hates doctors.” As did most people, but Mark and his friends were a little odd and rarely even saw them in an emergency. 

“Not even to save his brother’s life?”

He’d just said it was for a personal project, but if it was the only way to get the neurologist to help with Paul then Hugh would lie to get whatever he needed. “Give me a week or so and I can probably come get that sorted for you, but he won’t allow a doctor he doesn’t know anywhere near him.”

“Very well. Let me know when you get leave and I’ll make necessary arrangements. Another question; there are notes about poisoning?”

“Which one?” Hugh wondered, as Paul had poisoned himself more than once with unstable hybrids this year; he’d been happy to start working on them again, but hadn’t trusted many others to help out so had made stupid mistakes due to exhaustion.

“From twelve weeks ago.” That was about nine days before the explosion… not that Hugh was counting the days since he’d last spoken to his partner at all. “It states that he needed to be fully removed from the spores to recover as access to them even in tiny quantities caused the sickness to flare up again?”

“Yes.” Paul had been beyond frustrated. It was after that poisoning that the rash on his arm had gotten worse, but nothing Hugh had done had touched it. “There’s still a rash from it, but it’s exactly the same now as it was back then. His proximity to the spores doesn’t affect that.”

“I see. Does he have any fungi still intact?”

“None of his hybrids survived the explosion, but his farm with prototaxites stellaviatori is in a separate lab.”

“I’d recommend moving him there.” Jameson informed him. “I’ll admit that I don’t understand a lot of his work but there is a comment about a network that can be used to send messages along?”

“The mycelial network, yes.” The doctor concurred. “It links everything in the universe together as though the universe itself is one living body and the network is the vascular system.”

“I wonder if his mind has been sent along this system and the worsening illness is due to this open connection. Just a thought, of course. But if you bring transporter logs for the last few months with you while we scan his twin then hopefully I can piece together a bigger picture.”

“Okay. I’ll sort out some leave and contact you with details. Culber out.”

Hugh collapsed over the desk, his head in his arms as his head pounded and tears formed in his eyes. The stress of Paul’s illness was far worse than anything he’d ever experienced; no intentional torture or denial of treatment had torn him up inside this badly. He felt as though his emotions were leaking through the bond, falling unchecked out of existence as Paul failed to receive them and his shields couldn’t stop the bleeding. 

Was this what Paul had been dreading? Was this what happened to the soulmates who survived the operation to cut off a doctor’s emotions? If Paul recovered then Hugh would never bring up undergoing that procedure ever again! No, when… when Paul recovered… 

Hugh pulled himself up from the desk, his limbs seeming to weigh twice as much as normal as he staggered back to his lonely bed. He’d try sleeping again, then when he to up he’d have Paul moved to Specialist Lab B to see if the close proximity to the spores would help, then he’d ask Doctor Sotheby for leave to head back to Earth.

The idea that he could save Paul was only a bud of an idea at the moment, but he hoped it would bloom into reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paul's twin brother is Mark from RENT, but he's not actually going to turn up at any point so I'm not going to tag him.  
> While I can't see circumstances in the prime 'verse being quite right for the (era-appropriate) events of RENT to happen, I have no trouble imagining it in the mirror 'verse.


	4. Chapter 4

When Paul opened his eyes, he was honestly surprised. He’d heard that victims of a massive trauma, like an explosion, often couldn’t remember the actual event without help; however, Paul could distinctly remember something flying towards him and the rush of thoughts he’d had before getting knocked out. He wondered how long it was since that.

More than that, he decided sitting up and looking around, there was the question of where exactly he was. 

Reaching out with one hand, the scientist skimmed his hand over the top of the pink grass. It was feather soft, but with a weird texture that didn’t feel like any plant-life he’d encountered before. For a moment, he resisted the urge to call out and see if anyone else was in this strange forest; he felt oddly alone and the man realised he could barely feel Hugh along their bond. The man was alive, but he could tell nothing else. He stayed on the floor as he processed this, grasping the tips of the grass with his fingers and mindlessly watching how it fluidly morphed around his potentially damaging fist. 

He’d been dumped off the ship, he supposed… without Hugh… Had he been given up for dead? Slowly shifting to stand up, Paul couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d been abandoned on a strange planet without a survival pack. 

“Huh…” he said out loud, startled to find how easily he could move. It had been a surprise to wake up, but it was ridiculous to do so without any serious injury impeding him; in fact, he wasn’t so much as aching anywhere.

Had they left him somewhere that would aid his healing? Maybe he had been in an escape pod and something had gone wrong in the descent, then he’d healed on his own having fallen from it? The notion was far-fetched but he couldn’t think of any other explanation for the moment. 

A pod would have an emergency beacon though, so he picked direction and headed off.

The forest was thick with trees that almost glowed with a pinky-purple hue, as eerie as it was beautiful but Paul pulled the dagger from him belt and cut a notch into the bark of one tree; for a moment the slash began to disappear and Paul scowled as he watched his only chance to navigate melt away, but then it stopped. 

“That a little disturbing.” He muttered quietly, fighting the instinctive need to panic; maybe it had just been because the cut was so deep, but it felt as though the tree had responded to his thoughts… he shook his head and forged on trying to leave the idea behind. He didn’t want to be inventing ghost stories while he was alone on an alien planet. 

He scowled as he looked around, legs taking long strides as he kept moving. Hugh had chipped him years ago, a small bit of tech burrowed underneath his collarbone so his soulmate would be able to track him if he arrived at the planet. The planet was pleasantly warm and the air tasted fresh, there was no breeze as he trekked along the flat landscape and through the undergrowth. The colouring of the vegetation was a little off-putting, but he didn’t let it bother him; he had other things to worry about anyway.

After what had to be well over an hour of walking, the scientist decided to try scaling a tree; if he could get up high enough, then maybe he could work out the best direction to head in as opposed to wandering around and hoping for the best.

Picking a tree with branches low enough to grasp, Paul hoisted himself up and awkwardly began scramble up. The bark was covered in a slimy residue that smelled very similar to both his prototaxites stellaviatori and the hybrids he had been working on, which was decidedly curious; thankfully, he could still get a strong enough grip as he went to make his way to the top.

There was a noticeable problem when he broke through the canopy though. “Shit.” He swore softly as he looked around at the blanket of forest; his options for where to go were endless because he couldn’t even spot the clearing he had originally woken in. “Oh, shit. Where am I?” He swore again as he looked up and realised the sky was maroon with what looked like odd, magenta clouds; the notion that he was stuck on a strange planet with no equipment and no way to navigate is way to anywhere turning the scientist’s stomach.

After shuffling inelegantly back down, the man simply picked a direction and began to walk again; he really had no option but to keep going till he encountered something.

As the light in the sky began to fade, Paul noticed the flora about him beginning to glow. “That’s curious. Most of you guys are bioluminescent.” He crouched down at the base of a tree to get a better look at some of the fungi. It all looked different when emitting light and he stopped for a rest, eyes drinking in the sight. “Sure wish I had my PADD.” He murmured.

Yawning, he pulled himself up and continued on, now focussing more on putting one foot in front of the other than where he was going. He was bored and his brain felt oddly heavy in a way that indicated he was mentally exhausted… but not physically.

He paused with a frown as he realised this. If it hadn’t been for the headache, he wouldn’t even be considering stopping for a while. “I just need to be back on the ship.” Paul sighed in exhaustion as he looked around, his legs giving way as he dropped to the ground and hid his face in his hands; mentally he just couldn’t take anymore. The nagging fear that he had been left here on his own was overwhelming and he had no idea how to process this much raw emotion when he had no need to hide it away from anyone.

Because there was no one here… and nothing here.

Despite the warm air he could feel his body trembling as he battled a sudden and crashing sense of loneliness. He wanted Hugh. He wanted to be curled up on the sofa in his quarters, reading a good book while Hugh complained about his colleagues and patients. He wanted to go back to what had become normal, with his soulmate and their shared cabin and the increasing freedom he had for his research and no Lorca trying to get him to smuggle information off the palace ship. 

Between one breath and the next, the air around Paul changed and the warm breeze that had started up after a few hours of walking in unsettlingly still air had disappeared. Jolting his head out of his hands, Paul’s jaw dropped as he realised he was sitting in the corridor near his cabin on the Charon. “What the -?”

But for the first time, Paul noticed a gentle prodding in the back of his mind; as though a tendril was wriggling carefully through his thoughts. It moved in a way that reminded him of his bond with Hugh, but felt completely alien at the same time. 

“What’s going on?” He breathed, but the feeling at the back of his mind was expanding and the scientist gasped as it tapped into his thoughts and flooded them with information.

He wasn’t on an alien planet at all. He was inside the mycelial network! 

But the rush of information was too strong and he retched, keeling over to the side as his trembling increased.; his headache was almost blinding and he curled in on himself, unable to decide if he wanted a link to the network or not. It had been the focus of his study for so many years now and the chance to experience it was exhilarating, but it was also far too much for his mind to process, as though he wasn’t made to accept so much as once.

As though sensing this, the tendril drew back and Paul lay in a daze on the floor. 

He’d have a rest first; then he could begin researching how to get back.

\------

It was hopeless; no matter how hard he tried, Paul simply couldn’t figure out a way to escape the network. Not that the network itself wasn’t trying to help, it kept trying to give him information that the scientist assumed would help him escape, but every single time was like opening the floodgates to an overload of random shit that Paul’s mind simply wasn’t equipped to translate. Over the time he’d been here (weeks or months, he wasn’t sure; his ability to tell the passage of time even on his home plane of existence was often skewed), he had come to realise that the network connected to more than just his own universe.

There was a multiverse!

It was an actual thing and through the network, Paul had seen glimpses of numerous other universes. He’d seen himself working a plough on Earth in a world without modern technology; he’d seen himself scrapping earning a living in a job he hated; he’d seen himself living like a king with Hugh by his side; he’d seen himself in unhappy relationships; living on Vulcan as a teacher; working alongside an andorian.

However, the network most often showed him flashes of a universe where he lived in space with Hugh at his side. Sometimes, he could catch sight of Tilly and other familiar faces but he had no way to communicate with them. 

He’d seen this universe over and over again, but Paul couldn’t figure out why it was important. Was there something in that Stamets’ past that would help, some research that he had done? Was it something he was working on in the present or a future project that Paul had to keep an eye out for? 

He wasn’t sure if he was anthropomorphising the network or if it did actually count as some kind of a sentient being, but he was sure it had difficulty distinguishing time on such a small scale as human beings did. The images he saw when he tried to connect with it could vary greatly in when they were from; while he most often saw himself around his current age, he’d seen himself as a child running around both familiar and unfamiliar houses as well as an old man with white hair and a slow gait who bore some version of his face.

They’d tried different methods for giving Paul access to whatever information the network was trying to impart, but as the mycelial network connected to everything in the multiverse, narrowing it down enough for Paul to both understand and navigate had been impossible so far; whether it was piped directly into his mind or downloaded into the computers in the network’s rendition of his lab, the scientist was simply given too much data every single time.

“It’s ridiculous!” The distant voice jolted Paul out of his musing, causing him to pull out of his slumped position and scramble to his feet. “He doesn’t listen to anything I say.”

Something about the voice rang a bell in the back of his mind, but it was the next voice that set him running. “Ignore him. This isn’t the kind of thing where you can put in more hours and get to the end. It’s going to take brain power and that means you need to be rested.” 

Hugh! That was Hugh’s voice! He raced through the corridors, letting the network nudge him in the right direction and the scientist didn’t even hesitate when he reached the door; he burst into the room, eyes wide as he looked around.

“Hugh?” He called out, it was someone’s cabin, with a double berth and a living area; small, but comfortable enough. The voices had gone, but he knew that he was in the right place. At the end of the room was a door and Paul hurried over.

It led to an empty washroom and Paul let out a soft groan of utter disappointment. 

“I’m just saying…” there was a sound of someone spitting and Paul climbed quickly to his feet. “If I end up in sickbay because I tried to start a fight with Captain Lorca, I don’t want to hear ‘I told you so’.” 

“I know Paul.” Hugh sounded like he was trying not to laugh as Paul’s head turned, trying to work out where the sound was coming from. “I’ll be considerate.” 

The scientist couldn’t quite help the smile that flitted over his face as he gazed into the mirror and saw the familiar space-travelling lieutenant. The network had done it! It had finally found a way to let Paul observe this man without passing out from the headaches it gave him.

“Thank you, dear doctor.” The mirror version of himself gave the other Hugh a warm smile before putting his toothbrush down and heading out the room. As that Stamets disappeared, so did Hugh’s view of the man.

“Besides,” he heard the conversation continue distantly, despite being unable to see them, “I want to be the one who gets to hit Lorca. You know that.”

The mirror Stamets replied to his partner, but Paul couldn’t quite make out the words. Stepping back, he startled as he glanced down; his clothing had shifted to match the men in the mirror, with a burgundy, long sleeved top and comfortable, loose trousers. As he moved away, his armour reappeared and he couldn’t help relaxing; there was no one else here, but he was honestly uncomfortably without the protective shell that he’d worn for so long.

This other Stamets was important to the network though and while Paul couldn’t yet tell why, he’d do his part and keep checking in on him when possible. 

\------

Hugh Culber sighed at the warm kisses that were sliding along his jawline with Paul’s heavy breathing in his ear. He fought back a smile as he remained on his side, feeling his partner’s arms pressing into the mattress either side of him.

“Paul.” He sighed, but speaking the word aloud tugged him from the hazy area between dreams and the waking world.

The urge to smile had faded along with the weight around him as the doctor opened his eyes to his empty cabin. It had been months and his leave had ended so he was back on the palace ship, but he had put in for a transfer to a position on Earth; it was a higher pay grade than he had in his role on the Charon, however it meant he would be away from Paul, who still hadn’t woken up.

His first stop for the day, once he’d dressed and eaten, was to visit his comatose soulmate. . Hugh had sent Doctor Jameson’s idea over to Harris on the palace ship back when he had been on leave and his colleague had set Paul up in the lab beside his main farm nearly six weeks earlier and the occasional fluctuations in his brain scans had stopped. The scans Hugh took told him that his partner was no longer in any pain, but he wasn’t sure if any of that pain had been making it through to wherever his scientist’s mind was as Hugh felt no echo of it along their bond; a small comfort, but he’d take what he could get. 

As the doctor ran his fingers through Paul’s blond hair, he ran through his to-do list for the day. There was a gastrointestinal illness going around the communication department at the moment, that Hugh was fairly certain was intentionally caused by a slow-acting poison but the next set of scans would be taken for that after lunch, he was currently writing up his research on the links between xeno-biology and drugs, and he wanted to do some more research into the effect of a coma on a soul-bond; that was a task he would have asked Harris for help on, but that colleague could no longer be trusted with anything where sentiment would have once kept his mouth shut; Harris had had his emotions snipped.

He had never considered them to be friends, but the loss of someone he had once talked to combined with Paul’s continued coma had left Hugh battling a deep loneliness that his own drugs couldn’t seem to combat. 

However, he had a plan. True, it involved transferring off the ship to get the money to implement it, but he would do whatever he needed to rather than allowing that single thread of hope to fray any further. 

\------

Paul scowled as he held still, trying to accept the information that was piping into the back of his mind and translate it into something useful… The other Stamets was still in the attention of the network, but Paul had yet to work out exactly why he could stand in front of a mirror and see the man. The scientist had tried using the computers again, but now it was just spewing out code at him that didn’t make any sense; he was missing either context, a key or something else, but it was beyond frustrating being unable to bounce ideas off someone like Tilly, who hadn’t always understood what he was talking about but had often had an insightful comment that had lit him up with inspiration. She’d also had a knack for getting the computers to do what she wanted them to do, unlike Paul who always seemed to battle technology; not that it was his fault! He’d get the hang of one system and then someone would update the whole thing and he’d have to start again.

Hugh, for all that Paul loved him, wasn’t ideal for discussing work in any depth; he was a pretty face and a comforting presence which was occasionally enough to let Paul relax and work a problem out, but it wasn’t often that he showed any real understanding of what the scientist was doing. But at this stage, he’d even take Ensign Howard’s fawning drivel; she had no real interest in the mycelial network and had only joined his team to say she had worked on the Power Core on the Palace Ship in the hopes that it would get her the posting she wanted, but she could have at least had a go at yes-ing and no-ing in the right place.

It was honestly hard to believe that he was missing human interaction. He’d spent so much of his life irritated at the people around him, utterly unable to understand what it was they wanted but aware that he shouldn’t trust them and now he had to talk to himself just to hear a voice on demand. It was probably not normal… the very fact he was inside the mycelial network meant that everything was abnormal, but now he raced to a mirror every time he heard talking. The chance to hear people, even though it was typically the mundane chatter that he and his own Hugh had engaged in when they’d been alone and had felt reasonably safe, was too tempting to ignore. He’d actually managed to get over the fact that his voice sounded slightly higher than it did in his head and embraced the fact that he could at least hear Hugh’s voice rambling away about various different things as he spoke to ‘Paul’. True, it wasn’t actually himself and he couldn’t feel any emotions from this Culber, but it was nice to pretend for a moment. 

“Is that… singing?” Paul murmured, screwing up his face as he listened. 

It was some kind of singing, as though the network was too joyful to keep quiet (and he genuinely wondered if the network was actually as sentient as he assumed it was, or if his mind was starting to unravel). 

Then, he saw it! The other Stamets was in the network, hurtling along a surface layer, but inside nonetheless, Paul could see him when he shut his eyes, guiding something… something large?

It was hard to stay focussed though, similar to how he struggled to accept information from the network, it was incredibly difficult to try and follow Stamets as he led something - was that a starship? – through the network. 

A moment later, Mirror-Stamets and the object left… In its wake, the walls almost trembled and Paul lost his footing as something rumbled. The scientist froze as he heard the noise again, an odd rumbling that seemed to echo through the corridors. Picking himself up off the floor, he headed towards the medbay, listening carefully to see if he could recognise it. 

There again, the rumbling that went with the odd buzz in the air, as though the network itself was vibrating with a strange energy. The scientist froze at the intersection between the officer’s medbay and the regular one, turning around as a putrid scent filled the air; nose wrinkled against the smell, Paul’s jaw dropped when he saw it: what looked like rotten tentacles writhing at the end of the corridor, tendrils creeping over the walls as a purple mist seeped along behind, obscuring the path behind.

“What is that?” he murmured, holding still for a moment as watched, curiosity beating common sense as he failed to run away.

It was a mistake. Barely ten seconds later, the thing was all around, the vile smell over whelming as Paul dropped to his knees and gasped. “Shit!” He swore, he coughed harshly, breathing in was a bad idea.

He made a quick decision and stripped off his armour and his jacket, pressing the fabric of his top to his face as he looked around; it wasn’t ideal, but he could at least breathe without gagging now. Mentally cursing as he got to his feet, the blond searched for an exit with streaming eyes but he couldn’t even see the corridor walls anymore. He wasn’t sure if this thing had destabilised the illusion the network had put in place for him or if it was simply so thick that he couldn’t see through it. 

Reaching out with a hesitant hand, Paul swiped a finger along one of the tendrils; it was slimy and left a residue that reminded him of pus, similar to when he himself had had an infection in a cut and under the scab had been pus… Was this an infection? Was the network trying to heal itself? He’d thought that he was quite deep inside the network, so would an infection reach down here? Wiping his hand on his trouser leg and deciding to just pick a direction and walk, the scientist tried to recall whatever vague medical knowledge was stored in his brain. Did infections start skin deep and move deeper as they got worse, or vice versa? Or did it not make any difference? 

For all he complained that Hugh didn’t understand Paul’s work when he was telling his partner about what he was doing, the blond honestly struggled to take in much about his doctor’s work. Despite having been with the man for so many years, it was difficult to think about the medical world without flinching, a left over trauma from twenty-five years of trusting his health to people that he couldn’t actually trust.

Sighing and shifting his grip on his jacket, Paul sped up and began walking with some determination. There had to be a way out of this thing. He ignored the guilt that was beginning to bubble up inside him at the thought that he was the reason this infection existed in the first place; guilt was, after all, useless.

\------

The scientist had been walking for what felt like (and possibly could have been) days when he noticed something on his arm; the rash had spread and his upper left arm actually looked like it was rotting. He dropped his jacket to the floor as he stopped and twisted his arm to try and get a better look of it in the feeble light he got inside the infection.

“I need to see this properly!” He cried out, trying quell the fear that had taken root. Walking for an endless amount of time in a deep layer of the mycelial network hadn’t bothered him; he didn’t need to eat or drink in here and while he could sleep if he really wanted to, he didn’t suffer for staying awake, nor was he missing out on vital research time as he still struggled to make sense of what the network was trying to tell him. 

However, the thought that he was rotting inside the network, that his mind or soul or whatever it was that roamed this plane of existence could be so damaged sent a bolt of terror through him that he hadn’t felt in some time.

A spreading infection that literally rotted his flesh? What would it do when it encountered his soulmark? He was aware that Hugh had dealt with children who had had their soulmarks forcibly removed by their parents, but he’d never asked if it had actually changed anything, or if any of them had had an actual soul bond beforehand. Would their connection still exist or would it disintegrate? Was their bond already frayed with Paul being so far from his partner anyway? 

Despair welled within him and his legs refused to hold him. He hit the soft but slimy ground and clenched his eyes shut, arms wrapped firmly around his waist as the monotony of the last few days suddenly weighing on him and his utter loneliness became too much to ignore… He quietly swore to himself as tears welled up and the vulnerability refused to be squashed back into place.

As he choked back actual sobs, he noticed that the corruption had melted back and he was sitting in the vast forest again, but the endless pathways that he could see weren’t a comfort, just more proof that he wasn’t going to see Hugh anytime soon.

He missed Hugh. 

As though responding to his thought, the forest melted away into the washroom of the mirror-men and Paul got to his feet. There was the other Stamets, brushing his teeth as the other Culber held out a medical tricorder.

“Stop worrying. Stop doctoring.” Mirror Stamets was grouching.

“Well, one tends to worry when they’re doomed to love a brilliant but reckless maniac who’s willing to risk his life for glory.” Culber replied as he stopped scanning and picked up his toothbrush; Paul took a step closer, barely noticing his clothing shift to match the other Stamets.

“The captain was in danger.” The other scientist said quietly, and Paul couldn’t deny his curiosity. He’d seen them argue twice, but they always got soppy and proved themselves too soft to keep it going. 

“Captains are in danger every day.” And there was the Culber that Paul recognised; one who didn’t care less about anyone other than himself and Paul… even if this one probably had a wider range of loved ones. The scientist wondered if the Mirror Stamets felt as important being one of many as Paul did being his partner’s only loved one.

“You were in danger. I’ve spent my entire career trying to grasp the essence of mycelium. Now for the first time, I do. I saw the network. An entire universe of possibilities I never dreamed existed. It’s… unspeakably beautiful.” Paul couldn’t quite help mirroring Stamets’ expression as the man spoke; his description of the network was accurate. “I also knew you’d leave me if I let anything else endanger that creature.” 

“Oh, so you do listen to me.” If Paul shut his eyes, he could probably envision his own Hugh.

“Not really. You sold that with a look.” The hesitant attempt at a joke was rejected with a pissed-off look that Paul knew well.

“Don’t do anything that stupid every again. You may not care about you, but I do. You sure you feel okay?” And there was the soppy end to their argument. When he and Hugh argued, it usually ended because they reach a proper understanding or they refused to give up the one person who they could trust over what was usually a difference of opinion. A soulmate was simply too valuable a person to fall out with. Neither of them tended to retreat so soon.

“Yes, dear doctor. I feel okay.” Mirror Stamets gave a soft smile as he stared at his partner.

“Okay.” Whispered Culber as he headed out of Paul’s view. A moment later, Stamets followed and Paul was left mirroring his counterpart’s inane smile. He stepped back out the room and into the corridors of the Charon. His clothing shifted back to his own and he strode off, wondering what exactly had happened to give Stamets access to the mycelial network. 

\------

As Paul wandered through his lonely life, he could feel the mycelial network thrilling at Stamets’ ventures into its shallower levels; the whole network seemed to love Mirror Stamets and his alien DNA… It was difficult to wrap his head around the notion that the network preferred a version of himself who had made himself less than human, but the fact was undeniable. 

To be perfectly honest, he’d been surprised when he overheard that Stamets had mixed his DNA with a tardigrade. No wonder Mirror Culber had been so vexed with him weeks ago… 

However, it made his days of working to try and connect with this other Stamets a difficult task. He would have liked to ignore the existence of this bizarre man and yet he needed him to escape so he had to continue trying to send images of his own universe to him.

But he couldn’t deny the bitter feeling that tainted this effort.

The joy of being able to hear someone else’s voice in the mirror had lost its effect when Paul had come across the men fucking in the washroom. For all he had once enjoyed seeing their flesh pressed together, that felt like a long time ago; now it just reminded him of what he didn’t have and he felt even more bitter towards this other Stamets than before.

\------

There was a distinct shift in the atmosphere that alerted Paul to a change; the room around him actually rippled and the faint buzzing that he could feel under his skin was sharper, his withering bond conveyed an excitement that mirrored the buzzing and there was an echo of utter terror. He frowned and stepped away from his console, allowing the odd feeling under his skin to direct him, as though the network was a puppy, dragging him along to see something.

He walked the corridors until the façade melted away and he was walking through that forest again. The scientist shuddered as he looked at the looming plant-life; this was the reason he preferred to stay on the ship; it was hard to reconcile his life’s work in studying the network and bending its energy to his will with this strange world that he could literally feel beneath his skin. When he was here, he just wanted to wake up and find his soulmate.

“Hello?” A voice called through the flora, and Paul’s heart stuttered as he recognised it. No wonder he could feel something along their bond, faint and pathetic as it was.

“Hugh!” He called out as he emerged, running to his partner. However, he stopped short as the white uniform was difficult to miss.

“Paul! You’re awake!” The Hugh Culber that he had seen so many times in the mirror pulled him into a tight embrace. “Where are we?”

“I’m in a coma, I think.” Paul replied, his mood plummeting as his bond failed to respond to this man. “Please let go.” His voice croaked badly on that, but he was now fighting back tears as reality shattered his hope.

“Paul?” The mirror doctor stepped back, rubbing a firm hand up and down his arm, but Paul tightened his grip on his own emotions; this wasn’t the Hugh Culber that was the other half to his soul and he had to remember.

“No. Well, yes. But not the Paul you’re thinking of.” He took a difficult step back and forced himself to smirk. “How well do you actually understand the mycelial network?” 

Culber surprised him by rolling his eyes. “We’re talking about mushrooms already?”

“This is important.” He pointed out.

“Fine.” Culber crossed his arms over his chest and the scowl that his face fell into was painfully familiar; Paul steeled his emotions against this doppelgänger as he needed to figure out how to wake up to see his own partner. “It’s a network that spans another dimension of our universe, like the vascular system in a human being but more expansive. It can be used as a transport system with a sentient navigator to send matter from one place to another.”

“Exactly!” He smirked, pleased that this Culber had also taken the time to gain a basic understanding of Mirror Paul’s work; he’d thought so, but it was hard to be certain when he only heard snippets of conversation that he had no influence over. “Now, imagine that this network isn’t limited by the barriers of your own dimension.”

“Meaning?”

“We both originated in different universes. You aren’t my Hugh Culber and I’m not your Paul Stamets.” He explained simply. 

“Then, where is Paul? And where are we?” Culber’s scowl deepened as he looked around.

Paul tried to avoid resenting him for not waking up in this strange place alone as he spread his arms. “We’re in the network itself. Your Paul is wherever you left him.” The scientist sighed. “I’ve been trying to contact him because, as you said, he is now a sentient navigator. He’s what I need to get out of here and back into my own body. I bet he’ll take you back to yours too.” Paul would never leave his partner behind and he wasn’t half as soft as the Paul Stamets from the mirror world.

Culber’s face fell from its scowl into a look of utter sorrow. “He can’t take me back. I’m dead.”

Paul’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“I died.” Culber sighed and rubbed a hand over his head. “I worked out that we had a Klingon spy on board the Discovery and he killed me for it.”

Klingons… Paul’s knees gave way and he dropped to the ground. “Not my Hugh.” He whispered, his hand going to his soulmark as he tried to shake the image of a Klingon killing his partner. 

“Shit. I’m sorry.” Culber crouched down beside him, a warm hand pressed to his shoulder. “I’ve never thought about how to break my own death to someone.” He explained wryly, but Paul was trying not to focus on his bond; the strength had been fading for however long he’d been here. Would he feel Hugh’s death here the same as in his own reality?

He didn’t want to discuss something as private as his soul-bond with this man though, Hugh’s doppelgänger from another universe. “Not my Hugh.” He repeated, unable to make himself say anything else; he wasn’t sure how to react to this doctor, so he focussed on the most important thing: his Hugh was hopefully still alive. 

“Not your Hugh.” Culber assured him, before looking around again. “Though I do wonder how I came to be here.”

“Your Stamets is in and out of the network, albeit through a different layer; it probably recognised your soul-bond and refused to let you go.” He shrugged. “I imagine it was fairly easy as you’re on a ship that travels the network so often.”

“Soul-bond?” Culber cocked his head and he sat down on the pink grass. “That’s not a phrase I’ve heard before.” He was smiling as though he thought Paul was being quaint.

That just didn’t make sense. “You’ve never heard of a soul-bond? Maybe you use a different term. But it’s…” he paused for a moment, honestly perplexed. It was such an everyday thing that he’d never tried to put it into words before. “Like, Hugh is my soulmate and our bond connects us. I can feel him along it to know he’s alive and normally I can feel his emotions when we’re close enough. Some people say they can do more than exchange emotions but I think we argue too much for that.” He shrugged, not really sure why their strong bond had never gone to that next level.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that. Soul mates are from fairy tales, not an actual thing.”

It was then that Paul realised Culber’s wrists were uncovered. He grabbed the left one and yelped when he saw the blank patch of skin.

“What’s wrong?” Culber reached out, his hands not quite touching Paul as the scientist shuddered.

“You have no soul mark.” He whispered, forcing himself to remember that this wasn’t his Hugh… but it was hard to see that face connected to a blank wrist. “Is Stamets mated to someone else then?”

“Paul is mine!” There was a familiar possessiveness to the tone, but it meant nothing without the soul mark.

“And what proof is there of that?” A bitter laugh escaped him as he curled into himself, fingers scrambling to unfasten his cuff; he needed to see his own mark, to see Hugh’s barely legible chicken-scratch on his skin.

“We’re married! He’s my husband. We stood in front to witnesses and swore an oath to belong to one another… what are you doing?”

“It’s there.” Paul sighed flopping onto the grass as relief made him weak. He’d honestly been terrified for a moment that he’d see nothing but pale skin under his cuff as logic had apparently deserted him for a moment; but this wasn’t his Hugh Culber.

Warm fingers picked his wrist up and Paul for the first time in his life, Paul let someone other than his soul mate look at his wrist. “That’s my name… in my handwriting…” His wrist was gently released. “Did you get tattoos?”

“It’s my soulmark.” Paul sat up, looking curiously at him. “I’ve had it since I was born. Hugh has my name on his wrist, which appeared probably when my parents named me. He’s my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.” Which was a horribly soppy way of phrasing exactly what it meant to have a soulmate, but Culber came from a pretty pathetic universe so was hardly going to mock him for it.

Culber was smiling at him warmly, but Paul jumped up and out of his reach before he felt the need to touch again. “Come on. Whatever ship you were on, the geography here is pretty different.”

“Ship?” Culber asked and then gasped as the Charon formed around them. 

“Come on. Sleeping quarters are this way.” They were all a little bland, but this Culber wasn’t going to be sharing his cabin so he could change it however he liked.

\------

Hugh sighed as he leaned against the doorframe and stared at the PADD. Days on Earth were long and tedious, and he missed Paul like an ache that refused to dull; it was a constant tug in the back of his mind where his bond was lacking its partner. His soulmate was still alive, the ache wasn’t quite the vast abyss that overwhelmed people when their partner died, but Hugh missed everything from the play of Paul’s emotions in the back of his mind to their interactions; he missed his scientist’s arms settling around him in an embrace, and the way he shouted when he got too frustrated, and his biting sense of humour and the way he happily insulted everyone to Hugh, even Hugh himself. 

Paul’s comatose form was in his lab, linked to a med unit. On the surface, the change in location still hadn’t gotten his partner to wake up, Paul was still unmoving and non-responsive. He traced a finger over the PADD screen with a sigh. “I am working on it.” He whispered to the video feed of Paul. “Just wait a bit longer.”

Hugh had taken both his and Paul’s savings and was busy building a station on the moon where the spores came from. The doctor wasn’t sure if the Imperial Starfleet trusted him not to ruin his soulmate’s life work or if they just didn’t care, but no one had objected to him making a small science base on the surface. It was costly though, so Hugh was working a lot of hours on Earth to save up enough for the medical equipment he needed, as well as a fully furnished living space.

After all, living on a small station on a moon had been Paul’s aim, his motivation to work for Lorca; therefore, Hugh was absolutely going to give it to him if he could. Hopefully the proximity to the spores in their natural environment would help Paul recover and then they could live on the base and do their research without having to live on a starship again.

“Another year and we’ll be there.” He whispered, taking in his partner’s slender form. He dropped his PADD to the desk, rather than getting worked up over how well Harris was looking after Paul and staggered to the washroom. He was exhausted, but he had an end goal and refused to stop until he reached it.

It was hard to trust Harris as much as he once had; the emotional blackmail he had once had no longer balanced with the blackmail Harris had on him as the other doctor no longer cared about anyone. His soulmate had died in an accident that Hugh wasn’t entirely sure hadn’t been suicide about a week before Harris’ operation to remove his emotions, whereas Hugh’s soulmate was simply comatose and utterly vulnerable. 

However, Hugh had left him behind, trusting that Paul’s position as the Emperor’s Mycelial Power Core Specialist would keep him alive at least. 

He returned to skimming through Doctor Phlox’s Beast Menagerie with a weary sigh. It was a bit of a desperate shot, but he was hoping that there was a creature that could help his soulmate. Maybe the Altarian marsupial’s droppings would help; they contained a regenerative enzyme that could help heal his mind. Except Hugh wasn’t entirely sure it was just an issue of his body; he suspected that the mushrooms had made a difference, but he didn’t have a good enough understanding of Paul’s research to say for sure.

He had a feeling he would get further if he just studied Paul’s notes but reading through them was difficult. When he had tried, he’d almost been able to hear Paul’s voice and he had had to stop; the pain in his chest hadn’t been real, but his own emotions had insisted it was there anyway.

The temptation to take to drugs to soothe his loneliness was undeniable but for the moment, he had resisted.

Looking back at his PADD, he sighed again. He had no idea how these animals would react to Prototaxites Stellaviatori; whether it would blow them up or give him a way to connect to the mycelial network or …

Hugh froze as something occurred to him. The tardigrade! That was a creature that had connected to the network and if the mushrooms had pushed his partner into a coma then maybe they were the answer.

Hurrying over to his computer terminal, he began to look up Burnham’s work on the tardigrade. The beast had gotten into the dry spore stores and Paul had complained endlessly about the devastation it had caused, but Captain Burnham of the ISS Shenzhou had taken the thing for study. It had been able to claw through the walls without effort and Paul had had to keep it heavily shielded until the woman had arrived for it. 

Captain Burnham was dead and Hugh was sure that her research would be difficult to access, but he wasn’t going to give up.

\------

“I have a question about this corruption.” Mirror Culber’s soft voice sounded from the doorway to Paul’s smaller lab, making the scientist startle slightly as he hadn’t heard to other man approach. However he stayed at his desk, hunched over his screen instead of turning just yet. He still hadn’t gotten used to having another person here and was trying to relearn hiding his emotions, which was more difficult than expected. 

“Go ahead.” He prompted cautiously, unable to judge the mood of this man who wasn’t his soulmate based on vocal cues alone. 

“How far does the corruption go? My Paul always said that the networks links to everything in the universe… and I suppose it goes further than that as it links to yours as well…” Culber hesitated, but didn’t finish his question.

However, Paul could easily guess where he was going. “It was present in my universe, definitely in scans and…” he paused, reminding himself that this Culber couldn’t affect either his own physical body or his soulmate’s, “I had a rash that I couldn’t get rid of, which I think came from the corruption.”

“You didn’t get it checked out?” Paul rolled his eyes, recognising the chiding tone as he straightened up and turned to look at the doctor. 

“Of course I did. Hugh insisted.” Culber snorted, likely at his slightly petulant tone, but he carried on. “He couldn’t work out what it was and corruption caused by the network didn’t occur to me until I was already here.”

“So this corruption is in your universe and in the network.” The doctor hummed thoughtfully for a moment. “Has it spread to any other universes? Can you tell?”

“I don’t think so.” And at Culber’s raised brow, he elaborated. “I’m pretty sure your universe is the closest one to mine, as I could see your Stamets through the mirrors and you can see my Hugh. It makes me think that our universes are right next door to one another, or however positioning works in the multiverse. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“But, I’ve been the only one working quite so closely with the spores on my side. Captain Tilly hasn’t mentioned anything to me but I’ve heard enough of her rambling about health issues to know she’d tell me about a new rash.”

“Wait.” Culber stopped him with a hand in the air and a perplexed expression. “Captain Tilly?”

Paul smirked. “Is she still an ensign for you? She talks a lot more than any other officer I’ve come across, but she’s a good captain and scares the shit out of most people. Hang on, I thought you made it to our universe with your spore drive.” At Culber’s nod, he continued. “Did you not bother to check anything about the differences between your Discovery and ours?”

“I’ve no idea.” The doctor replied simply with a shrug. “I didn’t make it out of sickbay. And Tilly is a cadet.”

“Huh.” He frowned then looked up at the man hovering in his doorway still. “Anyway, I haven’t been able to see any signs of the corruption spreading in your universe, and I assume you would make your Stamets get any rashes checked out too.”

“He’s not got any. Not even now that he’s catatonic.”

Paul sighed and glanced at Culber’s uncuffed wrist. “It’s a shame you two aren’t actually soulmates. I can feel him in the network, just in a different layer. If you had a bond, you probably could have guided him here.”

“You can feel him?” Culber actually perked up at that, standing up straight and stepping inside the room, his expression eager. “Is he okay? Is he conscious?” 

“Depends on your definition.” Paul got up from his desk and headed over to the far wall, where his hardier samples should have stood. “He’s drifting through the network in a sort of bodiless state, from what I can tell.” 

“And if he could focus, he could make it here.” Culber nodded, his voice soft as his eyes glazed slightly. 

“I think your Cadet Tilly was asking permission to try something not too long ago. My Tilly has a sharp mind, so maybe yours can help.” He shrugged, debating looking in a mirror to see where the navigator was, if he was any closer to joining them. Looking in a mirror sometimes showed Lieutenant Stamets’ physical body, but sometimes Paul could watch the other man drift between the network and a variety of universes, not just the two he had seen; it would be fascinating if it wasn’t so frustrating.

“Where did the corruption even come from?” Culber asked with a sigh, leaning against a wall as he looked around the plain room. 

“Well… umm…” Paul stopped himself from answering, not sure how explain the whole thing. 

Culber pushed off the wall, coming to stand in front of him with a curious expression. “You know something? I assume it started in your universe?”

“Yes…” he hesitated, crossing his arms over his chest before taking a deep breath. “Straal and I discovered that when the network is opened up, there is a release of energy.”

Culber nodded his head. “I remember Paul took a long time to get the buffers to absorb the excess.”

“Well, we found that the energy is…” Honestly, he felt guilty enough about this as it was. Trying to explain that he’d made the mycelial network sick to Hugh’s face was almost impossible; he had to stare over the man’s shoulder as he forced the words out. “It’s powerful and it would be a waste to not use it.”

“Would that not drain it?” Culber took a step back, his handsome face falling into a frown.

“Not at first!” He objected. “It replenished itself quickly so it was fine.”

“Like a scratch…” Culber’s voice was flat, his body language clearly stating that he knew they hadn’t stopped at just taking a small amount.

“Well, the Emperor found out. So, she got me to take a core that would power her ship. It worked very well, but…”

“An open wound like that was bound to get an infection.” The man looked disgusted, and despite the fact that they had no bond, Paul had never wanted that expression focussed on himself. “You should have said no.”

“I tried to find a way around it!” he cried out, feeling like he was making excuses. “That’s how I ended up here! There was an accident in my lab where I’ve been trying to find a safer way to do this.”

“And did you know about the risk before you built a ship for your Emperor?”

“She would have had Hugh and I killed if I refused!” You didn’t say no to someone too unbending to share their soul. 

“I don’t know about your Hugh, but I would have preferred my own death over the corruption of the network, especially if it links to everything.”

There was a sharp pain in Paul’s chest as he fought back tears; this could have been a scene from his worst nightmare. Hugh pointing out all his mistakes, looking at him in utter disgust while refusing their bond… he had no bond with this Culber for him to reject, but watching this face sneer at him while his bond was so weak. He shut his eyes and slid down the wall, not yet crying but his breathing was unsteady. 

“Sorry.” He whispered, but the footsteps told him Culber had walked away. “I’m sorry.” He repeated, bringing his knees up and, now safe in his loneliness, he allowed himself a moment to sob. For all the arguments he’d had with his own doctor, the amount of time he’d spent without anyone there made holding his own difficult. 

It was ridiculous that he had someone else here and still didn’t get the human interaction he was after.

 

\------

The network around him was almost rippling with excitement, pulling Paul from his glazed staring at is screen. He’d finally gotten a glimpse of Lieutenant Stamets, who still looked catatonic as he was strapped to a standing frame. He could understand why the network was hopeful; Paul knew that this device had something to do with Stamets navigating the network, though he had only ever got hazy glimpses of it when Paul was near reflective surfaces. He wasn’t sure how it worked, but hopefully it would pull Stamets through the next layers of the mycelial network to join him here.

He scratched his arm, watching as the room he was in shifted to match the one the other Paul was in. It happened whenever he looked in a mirror and saw Stamets; the room he was in would disappear so that he was in a reflection of the other room. It was a strange phenomenon but unfortunately, mirroring a room didn’t mean he had access to the information on their computers. He could tap at the monitors but all they displayed was the same jumbled stream of information that the network gave and he failed to understand every time. 

As he waited, he saw the spores fill the chamber at the lieutenant start to twitch. He clenched his fists and stared, blue eyes wide as he barely dared to breathe; something was going to happen. Either he would wake up and kick Paul back into his own body or he would join them here on this more malleable layer in the network.

However, a moment later and Paul was on his back in the forest opening his eyes as he fought the need to retch. Had something gone wrong? Where had the room gone? He’d heard Tilly shouting, someone giving orders and something about how they were losing him… Had Stamets died? Was that why Paul was here instead of looking into a mirror? 

Had the network been wrong about him?

It was hard to imagine that something that encompassed all of time like the network did had been wrong about this, but if Stamets was dead, then why had the network been so sure about him?

“Shit.” He swore softly, lethargy pulling him down as he left the hope seeping out of him. There was no point in getting up; his one chance to get back was gone.

He probably should go talk to Culber. He’d want to know his partner was dead, even if they hadn’t been soulmates… but he lay on the grass for a while longer, misery eating through him. There had to be another way out, he decided, and he would get on with looking for it in a minute. He just needed a moment to collect himself.

There was a pulse in the forest, the ground trembling and jolting Paul into sitting up. He frowned, looking around curiously but unable to identify what it was. Was Culber up to something? Had he figured out something that Paul had missed?

There it was again, but this time the scientist could hear Tilly whispering indistinguishably in the background. He stood up and looked around, then he felt it; the network was buzzing and shifting even more frantically than when Culber had joined him here. Then he spotted him.

Lieutenant Paul Stamets from the universe in the mirror was staring wide-eyed at the forest, slowly spinning as he took in the sight.

“Hello Paul.” The Terran scientist called out, unable to hide the smile that tugged at his lips. “Ready to get to work? I so hoped you would find your way.” He couldn’t deny the relief that came from seeing the navigator alive; he had a fresh chance to escape.

The other Stamets turned to look him up and down as he took a step back, clearly confused. “Is this the afterlife? Are you some sort of narcissistic Virgil leading me to judgement?” And while Stamets laughed, Paul could easily read the fear in his eyes.

“Yes Paul.” He replied as seriously as he could with glee bubbling up inside him. “You’ve been wrong about everything. There is a God and she’s very, very mad at you right now.”

The lieutenant stared at him in growing horror for a moment, and Paul lost his ability to keep a straight face.

“I totally had you for a second there! You can’t deny it.” It was entirely possible that relief was making him giddy, but it was absolutely understandable; he finally had a navigator to help him navigate his way out of here. “You should have seen your face; I mean, our face. Hoo! That was classic.” Hugh would probably find it pretty funny; it was a shame he couldn’t make a list to take back with him as there was a bunch of stuff he wanted to tell his soulmate about. 

“So, there is no God?” Stamets asked in confusion, and Paul decided to take pity on him; after all, he’d not had anyone to explain things when he had first arrived.

“Well, you’re still alive, so technically, who knows?” He looked out over the mycelial forest as he spoke, taking in the almost jarring colours; it was beautiful, but it was still a little overwhelming. He preferred to view it from a window so that he could reject the idea that he was getting used to it.

“But, if I’m not dead, who are you?”

“You, in my universe.” He held out a hand in the gesture Doctor Culber had made to him in this forest some time ago. “Nice to meet you.”

As soon as they grasped each other’s hands, the network reacted and Paul once again stood in bright corridors that he didn’t quite recognise. Shit… how long would it be until Culber arrived and distracted Stamets? 

“Wait, this is my ship.” Stamets said, turning to head down one of the corridors.

“No. You’re still in the mycelial network, but it knows what’s familiar to you and it’s trying to make you feel at home.” He explained, as simply as he could. “Your comatose physical self is still on board the real Discovery but your neural energy has taken a little detour.”

“Interesting.” Stamets replied, but his expression showed he meant it. “How did you get stuck here?”

“Like you, I’m an astromycologist. I was conducting experiments in my lab on the Emperor’s palace ship. There was an accident and my mind ended up here too. It seems we share parallel fates.” Thankfully… It was a relief to be able to talk to this other version of himself properly though, his other attempts at communication just hadn’t been understood. “From what I can tell, my physical form is also in a catatonic state on my vessel. I was losing hope, until you navigated the mycelial highway for the first time. I tracked your comings and goings. I’ve been trying to make contact, but I haven’t been able to transmit more than glimpses, images of my universe.”

“That explains what I’ve been seeing.” The lieutenant understood far quicker than his husband had, the joys of talking to a scientist who had a good baseline in their work. “Visions of a palace, Tilly as a captain. I thought I was going insane, but it was just you reaching out.”

Paul sighed as he wordlessly agreed, not bothering to speak as his mind wandered off track; concentrating was a hard task when the chance to see his soulmate was approaching.

“Where’s the exit?” Stamets asked, looking around. 

“That’s where you come in. You’re the navigator; navigate us the hell out!” Impatience started pushing at his temper, drowning out the giddiness of finding a chance to get out as he now wanted to get a move on with it.

“Let’s get to my lab. Maybe it’s there.” But the corruption started to interfere with the network’s ship façade and the lights flickered. “What is that?”

“There is something wrong inside the network, something corrupted. You don’t want to get swept up in it. I did once and was lost for days.” He tried to explain without making the mistake of mentioning the cause of the corruption; his chance to get out of here was too close for him to risk setting Stamets against himself, like he accidently did with Culber.

Stamets nodded, looking puzzled but willing to accept the basic explanation for now. “Engineering’s that way.” But he froze and stared at the approaching disease, its tendrils writhing as the purple mist crept along behind it.

“Let’s go.” Paul prompted him, wanting to get a move on. He didn’t want to just set off down a corridor on a ship he didn’t know.

Stamets pointed in a different direction. “It’s over there.” And the two men set off running, the tendrils of corruption feathering across their backs; a sensation Paul still wasn’t used to, but hopefully that wasn’t going to be an issue anymore. 

Stamets slapped a hand against a panel beside a door, and Paul darted in and grasped the railings at the top of a room he’d only ever seen in the mirror.

“Welcome to our way out.” Stamets gestured to his lab and hurried down the steps.

Paul followed at a more sedate pace, scratching at the itch in his arm as he looked around. “The network has been trying to communicate with me, giving me information about how to get out of here, but the most I could understand is that I needed you.” He informed his mirror-self as he took in the new location.

“Me?” The lieutenant looked puzzled, pausing in tapping at the screen to peer curiously at him.

“Yes, you. But it was struggle to understand that much. Human minds just aren’t made to interact so intimately with the network.” He picked up a PADD from the desk Stamets was at, pleased to find that access wasn’t restricted as he began to explore it. “Mixing your DNA with a tardigrade though, I wouldn’t have dared to do that.”

“It was that or kill the tardigrade in our attempt to navigate the network.” Stamets replied in a tone that implied the right choice was obvious. “It’s a sentient species.”

“We encountered a tardigrade, you know? It was a big, ugly thing that kept eating our spores. We couldn’t kill it, but we got it contained long enough for Captain Burnham to take it away. I think she wanted to study it.” Burnham had had a number of strange habits, but her reputation kept anyone from questioning her choices. “Still, it is odd. Even knowing that you gained access to the network more completely than I ever did, I don’t think I would have tried combining our DNA.” As much as he may have wanted to, Paul needed to be fully human to keep the privileges he had; genetics experiments on himself could well have led him to a life contained on the wrong side of the lab, held in place with restraints as he was used as the Emperor saw fit. 

“I would have been arrested if we hadn’t been at war when I did it.” Stamets replied wryly, rubbing a hand through his hair. 

“Luckily, that wasn’t a problem.” Paul tried to smile encouragingly at him, failed then put the PADD down. “Any idea how to get out of here?”

“To map an exit from the network, it’s helpful to know exactly where Discovery entered, as a way to get our bearings.” Stamets explained as he brought up a hologrammatic map. It was technology the Terran Empire had developed but rarely used as most people preferred the privacy of screens over having something so brazenly displayed before everyone. “And once I know that, we can hunt for the best path out.”

Stamets moved around the desk to observe it from a distance and Paul tried to understand what he was seeing; locations of their jumps and the pathways they took to get there, he assumed, but the data was scrolling quickly and wasn’t written for the understanding of someone not involved in the Spore Drive. Paul had heard of their device, but all he knew of it was what he had overheard through discussions near mirrors; he was loath to admit that he couldn’t work it out at a glance.

“Huh.” Stamets was frowning as he stepped back to the desk.

“What?”

“The co-ordinates of our final jump aren’t here.”

Paul huffed as he scratched at his arm again. “Tell me again why you’re not useless?” It was beyond frustrating to have Stamets here and realise that he wasn’t sure how to get them out. Paul had a job to do and standing around here wasn’t getting it done.

“Tell me why you can’t stop clawing at your arm.” The lieutenant countered as he leaned against the desk. 

“It’s nothing.” He deflected, not wanting to show anyone his left arm.

He got a flat, unimpressed look in return. “It’s nice to know I’m a terrible liar in every universe.” Stamets responded.

The Terran scientist hesitated for a moment before baring his forearm; hopefully his gloves covered enough of his wrist that Stamets wouldn’t see his soulmark. He hadn’t put his cuff back on after showing Culber his wrist simply because he liked to see Hugh’s name; it was nice to remember his soulmate was still waiting for him.

“Is that… armillaria ostoyae?” Stamets hurried over to grab his arm and stare at the corruption under his skin.

“It’s the network.” He explained as he pulled his arm back and covered up again, trying not to shudder at the skin contact. “It’s taking me over. I’ve been here too long.”

“Paul.” Culber’s voice called out and both men turned to look at the man as he stepped out of view.

“Hugh?” Stamets began to move away from the console he needed to be at as Paul fought back his irritation. He’d hoped Culber would stay away while they got work done. “Did you see him?”

“See who?” He retorted, trying not to snarl in annoyance. Of course Culber arrived right when he was trying to make progress on getting out of here. Typical!

“He was here. That must mean he’s trapped too.” Stamets said in wonder, turning and running away. 

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” he yelped, recalling that Stamets had been catatonic when Culber had been killed, so he likely didn’t realise the man was dead. If he left now, it would take far too long to get back on track. “If you don’t focus on the task at hand, you’ll get lost and we’ll never escape. Stop!”

But Stamets was more focussed on his partner than Paul. While the scientist could understand why, after all if it had been his Hugh then he would have dropped trying to escape, but for the moment it was just frustrating to see Stamets leave the lab. 

He headed out into the corridor and spotted Stamets disappearing around the corner. Shit, the lieutenant may not want to leave if he realised his partner was dead in his reality. “Stamets! Wait a minute!” He called out before jogging after him.

“Hugh!” The other man called out as he also hurried and Paul lost sight of him again.

“Don’t just run! You’ll lose your way and get caught by the corruption!” He tried to explain, battling down the rising anger. “Shit…” he ground his teeth as he turned on the spot. He didn’t recognise any of these corridors; this had to be the USS Discovery.

However, it had to be similar to the ISS Discovery, right? They were the same ship, just under a different flag so if he imagined them with different panelling… it was hard to do with adrenal glands working overtime, but he forced himself to take a moment. 

Computer Panels. He could check with the computer where he was. Hopefully with Stamets here, the network will have settled down enough to stop flooding him with information and he’d be able to get what he needed from them… if they worked at all. The flickering lights weren’t exactly encouraging. 

“Oh, come on!” He grouched when the computer refused to work. 

Whatever, it was fine. He’d just think it through. Where would Hugh go if he wasn’t here? The medbay? If engineering was in the same place on both the USS and ISS Discovery, then the medbay was along the corridor to the right.

He set off down it, straining his ears as he went to listen out for either Stamets or any approaching corruption. He scratched at his arm as he pressed the panel for a lift; the surface area of itching skin was increasing again and he didn’t want to think about it. The corruption was patchy, but it went passed his shoulder now.

Thankfully, the lift still worked and he got in. He wondered if his skin in his actual body was covered in this rash too, or if Hugh had found some way to settle it down. Had he had time to search for an answer? It felt like Paul had been here for months and months, but he couldn’t be sure how much time had passed outside the veins of the network.

The door to the medbay slid open as Paul entered, but no one was here. He cursed as he looked around, before quickly stomping back out. Either his quarters or the mess hall then. The quarters Paul had stayed in when he’d been stationed on the ISS Discovery were fairly near here but from what he’d seen from the washroom mirror, Culber and Stamets had had an officer’s cabin. Those were slightly further away, but Paul ran. He’d wasted enough time.

“Stamets?” He called out as he headed down the main corridor of the officers’ quarters.

Several doors opened as he went, glancing inside told him that they looked the same as the men’s cabin, but neither Culber nor Stamets were in them.

“Stamets?” He called again, then came to a door that didn’t open. Pausing for a moment, he listened; there was a soft murmur of voices, he thought, though it could have been something else. “Stamets, get out of there! This place is quicksand! If we don’t leave, we die.”

He banged on the door as he shouted, hoping to draw the other man back out. They needed to be in engineering, plotting a way out of the network or it was going to be too late; he shuddered as he tried to ignore the itching that flared up at this thought. They had to move before the corruption did irreparable damage to the network and therefore the multiverse.

As a haunting operatic aria began, the lighting shifted into something more stable. Paul would have cheered if the situation hadn’t been so tense; it was good to know that this tardigrade-hybrid version of himself had more influence over the network, but they still needed to go.

He glowered at the door for a moment before leaning against the opposite wall. Five minutes. He’d give the men five minutes to say goodbye and then they had to make a move. As the music swelled and Paul lost count of where he was up to, he blinked as he went to push off the wall before realising something was different. 

“I’m back.” He sat up and looked around. “He did it.” He was on a bed in one of his labs on the Charon, and the scientist grinned in relief for a long moment, truly thankful to be back.

He got to his feet and hurried over to a wall monitor, forcing his weak legs to carry him. “Computer, locate Doctor Hugh Culber.”

“Doctor Hugh Culber is not aboard the ISS Charon.” The computer responded. 

“Computer, state Doctor Hugh Culber’s last known location.”

“Doctor Hugh Culber was transferred to California, Earth three months ago.” 

“He left me?” Paul wondered, his heart jolting painfully as he stared at the panel. “Computer, how long was I in a coma?”

“Six months, thirteen days.”

Shit. That was longer than he’d thought. Hugh must have left in order to find help. “Computer, record letter.”

“Recording.”

“Hey Hugh. Um… I’m awake? I was trapped in the mycelial network, and you wouldn’t believe what I saw there. I would have made a list, but I couldn’t exactly bring it back with me.” He paused for a moment as a thought occurred to him. “I’m going to try something you really won’t agree with and… Well, if I die then I’m sorry, but this is important. You now the rash I have? It’s grown and I know why.

“The mycelial network is sick and it’s my fault.” He unzipped his sleeve enough to rub at his arm, where the corruption stopped just shy of the cuffed he was still wearing in this reality. “I guess it’s like we left it open to infection. I’m not sure where the corruption came from, but it is there and the network links to everything across the multiverse. If the network is destroyed then everything else will be too.” He unzipped the other sleeve, noting the corruption now creeping down his right arm. 

“There’s a big, open wound that links straight to the network on this ship. It needs closing.” He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered as he spoke, noticing for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his uniform armour. “So, I guess this is me saying goodbye. There’s a way to stop the destruction of everything but the energy will bounce back and it’s…” He let out a slow breath, there was no point hiding his emotions if he was going to get blown up soon anyway. “Well, I’m glad you’re not on the ship. I’ve missed you and… I love you. Goodbye.”

He tapped the panel to stop recording before leaning his head against the wall, ignoring the tears that had started to fall. He’d spent too long on his own in the network; he was shit at hiding his emotions now.

But it didn’t matter. He straightened up, sent his message to Hugh and began working to delete all record of his work. If he had to die to correct his own mistakes then so be it, he’d blow this ship to smithereens, but he’d be damned before he left enough research behind for someone to build a new power core. He tapped in his authorisation and then stepped over to the storage cupboard, grinning darkly to find his armour in there. He moved his badges from his jacket to his armour, pulled it on then turned to begin destroying what was dotted around his lab. 

“Proximity alert, two people approaching.” The computer spoke up suddenly, making the scientist jump. He’d never had that set up. Had Hugh spent enough time here before leaving that he’d needed warning that someone was coming in? It was a nice thought. 

“Computer, engage cloak.” He said, stepping into his hiding place and holding still just as the door whooshed open and the intruders marched in to shout the area clear.

“Stamets is gone.” Landry noted as Paul held his breath. “Coward probably left at the first sign of trouble.”

Lorca cut an intimidating figure with blood drying on the side of his face. “All of his research is still here.” The man pointed out. “I’ve known more than one Stamets and they both have one thing in common: They love their work too much to leave any of it behind.” Paul was left with no chance to consider that strange statement as Lorca reached through the cloak and slammed him against the wall. “Hello Paul.”

“Gabriel. I really hoped you were dead.” He gasped as the fingers around his neck tightened. 

Lorca smirked. “Ah, you can’t always get what you want.”

Landry stepped forward, powering her weapon up. “Hi doc.” 

“Ironically, I have to thank you for helping me finish what I started.” Lorca tapped the barrel against Paul’s chest before stepped away to pace. “After you sold me out and ruined our coup attempt, I was down on Priors World recruiting allies when the emperor caught up with the Buran. As I beamed back to join the fight her torpedoes hit and luckily, so did and ion storm which caused a transporter malfunction.” He turned and chuckled as he rubbed his hand along the barrel of his gun. “And know where I ended up?”

“Frankly, I’m still stuck on the ‘not dead’ part.” He answered honestly.

“A parallel universe.” Lorca’s smirk was unnerving, but Paul’s mind had woken up.

“The ion storm must have swapped your transporter signatures.” He realised, but he didn’t dare analyse the rest of the facts yet. He’d think about where Lorca had gone when he was out the path of the predator.

“To me, it was physics acting as the hand of destiny; my destiny.” The man stepped closer, his gait reminding Paul of the wild creatures that had once prowled Earth. “The bioweapon you’re developing for the Emperor, show it to me.”

“Happily, sir.” He smiled as nicely as he could at the other man, which wasn’t too difficult when he’d been given this little bit of luck. Used incorrectly, as Paul was currently planning, the weapon was unstable enough to cause an explosion; however it was spore based and he was pretty sure it could be used to help destroy the power core. They were all going to die, but as long as Hugh was safe then he didn’t care what happened to the thousands of other people on this ship. 

Unfortunately, the only place he could make changes to the weapon and that had to be done from the control deck on the bridge. He tapped the commands into the computer and started to count down how long until it was safe to start moving through the corridors again. The weapon wasn’t exactly perfect, but it had only been a side project that he’d been working on. He’d been going the necessary spores for this weapon on the Discovery and they’d started with hybrids similar to the ones that had killed Straal so many years ago so the work had been slow. However, the concentration built up in storage units that linked to the ventilation system? If the environmental controls malfunctioned while the spores were actually in the system then the mixture would be easy to spark into an explosion. Well, the bridge was close to the throne room that he could hopefully slip away.

Lorca didn’t actually seem interested in what he was doing, the charm he had once oozed was completely absent as Paul wiped out everyone who might get in their way. The vital spots of the ships, such as the bridge, the throne room and the medbay would be protected from his bioweapon, but he could significantly improve Lorca’s chances of winning.

Paul genuinely didn’t care who was in charge, as long as he and Hugh got to retire away to somewhere quiet.

“Take this ship-wide.” Lorca ordered once Paul informed him the last of the life signs they could reach had gone. “Hello Philippa. I’ve watched for years; you let alien races spill over the borders, flourish in our backyard and have the gall to incite rebellion. Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race.” Paul watched uncertainly as the people began to move through the ship again, hoping they weren’t an attack squad even though he honestly thought they were… he didn’t dare draw attention to himself with Lorca though, especially not while he was making his speech. 

“Try as you might, it’s clearly not you. Even Michael knew that; it was her greatest shame. Well, it’s indecorous of me to share pillow talk. To the rest, many of you know me, some of you served with me. To all, I make this offer: Renounce Georgiou! The Empire is dying in her hands but you don’t have to, not today. Michael Burnham is not to be touched. She is integral to our future plans; a future where we together will make the Empire glorious again.” Paul cut the signal out as Lorca nodded.

“There’s a team approaching.” He said softly, stepping away and dropping his gaze. “An attack squad I think, from the way they move.”

“Landry.” Lorca said simply and the woman nodded and left, several soldiers following her.

“You know, I ended up in another universe, where there was another version of you.” Lorca said conversationally as they waited. Paul tensed up, but held still. “It’s a soft place where they just want everyone to hold hands and be friends. Can you imagine?”

He paused, but Paul didn’t reply. He didn’t want to get into a discussion of how he had seen a soft mirror universe that he suspected was the one Lorca had been too; the way Stamets and Culber had bitched about their Captain Lorca should have made him wonder, but he never expected any version of the man to be anything but a bastard.

“No? Well, they were at war with the Klingons because the Klingons viewed them as weak.” He spat the word out, likely annoyed because the Klingons here had been easy enough to subdue. “But the Paul Stamets I met over there? Well, he was more impressive than you.”

“What?” Paul jerked his head up to glare at Lorca.

“He had a backbone.” The traitor drawled with a smirk. “He argued with me and bickered and complained and he still got his work done. But you? You cower away and hide your face and you couldn’t even hold out against the Emperor when the end result was something you wanted so desperately; that little base with Culber.” His tone was mocking and Paul managed to avoid flinching as he tried to not be ashamed of what he wanted.

The door opened before Paul could think of anything to say and one of the Emperor’s officers was pushed through by Landry.

“Owosekun.” Lorca greeted with a dangerous smile. “Still loyally serving your Emperor, I see.”

“I am.” She replied with barely any hesitation and little more than a quiver of her lip. “Long live Emperor Georgiou.”

Lorca snarled and stepped towards her. “Let’s go see your Emperor then. You can tell her that I was here, that I am here and will always be here. I won’t back down until she is gone!”

He jerked his head at Landry as he shoved Owosekun out the door, and his right-hand woman pushed Paul along behind them. Head held high, the Emperor’s loyal subject marched before them through the corridors. Her face was set stronger than steel, not flinching even when they encountered the slaughtered bodies of her team that made Paul’s stomach turn. 

He still felt weak, entirely ill-prepared for facing the Emperor again after six months in a coma; six months with his body wasting away, though not as depleted as he might have been, which implied someone had been checking on him. Probably Hugh, he decided, or someone Hugh had blackmailed. 

As they approached the reception chamber, Lorca gestured for them to hide in the shadows. Paul flexed his fingers around his PADD, desperately wishing he was somewhere else. “Uhh…” he hesitated, and Lorca turned to raise his brow.

“What is it?”

“You won’t be able to get through. The front of this room is shielded.” He’d tell Lorca so that if the man won then he would view Paul as an ally, and if Georgiou won then she wouldn’t know he’d been helping… he hoped…

“You keep an eye on that and let me know when it’s down.” The larger man commanded, before turning to look at his captive. “You first.” He bowed mockingly to Owosekun and she stepped forward, her back straight as she refused to cower or beg.

“Don’t shoot.” Owosekun made her first plea, which confused Paul until he realised that, although he couldn’t see her from his hiding place, the woman was pleading with Emperor Georgiou rather than Lorca. 

The Emperor’s voice was cold and unforgiving, although she clearly didn’t execute her subject without giving her a chance to talk. “Where are your troops, Commander?”

“We were ambushed.”

“How did you survive?” Paul shuddered as he heard the disgust in her voice. Was it too soon to be missing the network? He didn’t have Hugh in there, but he’d been safe from both Lorca and the Emperor. 

“Lorca spared me.” Owosekun explained simply. “He said he wanted you to know.”

“Know what?” Lorca nodded across to Landry as the Emperor spoke.

Landry silently raised her weapon. “That he was here.” Owosekun’s final words as Landry’s shot disintegrated her seemed to be some kind of a signal.

As Lorca’s troops powered up their weapons, the man himself stepped out of the shadows. “Hello Pippa. Did you miss me?” He asked with a smirk.

The troops began to fire and Paul huddled as close to the wall as he could get, crouching down and hunching his shoulders. He just wanted to see Hugh again, not get caught up in a fight for the throne; he didn’t really care if it was Lorca or Georgiou on the throne, so long as they left him along to live his life with Hugh.

The barrier began to slowly weaken and Paul got to his feet as Lorca’s troops “Light her up.” Lorca’s voice called, and then the shield began to weaken far more quickly. “Mr Stamets?”

“Containment field at thirty percent. Twenty five percent.” He called back, still pressed against the wall as he tapped on his PADD; he just had to get through this in one piece, then he could see Hugh. “Five, four, three, two, it’s down.”

He kept back as Lorca and his troops began taking down the Emperor’s soldiers, his right hand tight around his wrist as he waited.

“Emergency transport!” The Emperor’s voice rang out, allowing her to flee. 

Lorca growled as he stepped forwards. “You didn’t warn me she could do that, Mr Stamets.” 

Paul didn’t reply. He hadn’t known she could, but he didn’t want to risk starting an argument and getting himself killed. 

“Please tell me we can kill him now.” Landry requested, a glint of hope in her usually dull eyes. 

Lorca turned around to scowl at him. “Well, that depends if he can disable an emergency transport system.”

He nodded his head, quickly tapping at his PADD. “I can- I can do that.” He stuttered slightly, trying to keep himself useful. 

“Good. Set up a perimeter around the throne room. Let’s tighten the noose.” And as Paul tapped into Charon’s systems with far less care and stealth than he ever had before, he was pushed along closer to the next fight.

With a flick of his fingers, Lorca signalled for his men to get to work and several of them crept forwards as everyone else pressed back into the shadows. 

“She’s not here yet, Captain.” One of them called back as they wiped out all living beings in the throne room. 

“You believe in destiny now, Mr Stamets?” Lorca asked and Paul could hear the smirk in his voice. 

Ignoring how the man purposefully not using his title, neither ‘doctor’ nor ‘specialist’, Paul looked around the room; he’d never had reason to be here before. “That’s, uh, rhetorical, right?” Other than having a soulmate, there was no such thing as destiny; and Paul was willing to bet that science, rather than destiny, could actually be applied to soulmarks, if anyone bothered to do the necessary research.

“Your lack of vision continues to disappoint me.” Lorca drawled, and the scientist suppressed a shudder. His plan was to survive, and disappointing Lorca in anything right now severely damaged his chances of doing that. “I used to suffer from that too. But nothing that’s happened to me was an accident.” The larger man lectured as he drew the Emperor’s sword as he allowed his delusion side to show.  
“Not ending up in another world, not finding a ship that would help me return here, none of it. I’m living proof that fate is real. Speaking of which, we’ve reached the tipping point where your usefulness to me is outweighed by the risk of keeping you alive.” Paul’s breath caught in his throat as Landry restrained him and he realised that this was it. “I mean, I’m never going to trust you, honestly.”

Lorca nodded his head and one of his lackeys opened a floor panel. Paul’s jaw dropped slightly as he realised he could see the mycelial power core… and even if this moment, it had a kind of odd beauty to it; something so wonderful that was destroying the multiverse. 

“The living core of the mycelial network.” Lorca said majestically, proving once again that he didn’t really understand Paul’s work. “It’s poetic justice, don’t you think? Scientist destroyed by his own creation?” Lorca smirked as Landry let go and stepped back. “Just kidding. I hate poetry.”

\------

“Fuck.” Paul murmured as he opened his eyes and squinted. He was lying on pink grass, surrounded by bioluminescent plants. For a moment, he wondered how he had gotten here; had he been in an accident? A shuttlepod crash? But then it came back to him. Someone had shot him, he could still feel the burning sensation spreading across so much of his skin as he evaporated. The scientist shuddered and forced his mind to leave that idea alone. There was something more interesting to focus on.

This was the mycelial network. 

Sitting up slowly and scowling, he looked around. The same scenery as the last time he’d been here, except for a small, brick house; standing in its doorway with a curious look on his face was Mirror Culber. 

Paul shot to his feet and glared. “You.” He hissed, unreasonably angry that this was the wrong Culber. He rubbed a hand across his soulmark, turned around and marched away.

How the fuck was he supposed to get back to Hugh now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: That was slightly longer than expected, but I rather liked the idea that the longer Terran Paul spent on his own, the worse he was at hiding his emotions when he finally got back. 
> 
> If you enjoyed it, then (as with anyone who has written a story) #kudos and comments are always appreciated.  
> Hopefully, I'll find time to update my other Star Trek story soon.


End file.
